UNV Magazine - Summer 2020

The COVID-19 global pandemic
sent us to our homes in our
respective corners of the earth,
causing us to stop and take stock
of the material, spiritual, social,
and systemic violence imposed
on us all by the powers that
be: our local, state, and federal
governments.
No force, no other tragedy or
pandemic has ever made the
whole world stop all at once.
And now—with the COVID
pandemic still a threat to our very
lives—global uprisings, sparked
by the ruthless police killing of
George Floyd in Minneapolis,
have brought tens of thousands
of people to the streets.
Similarly, no other tragedy or act
of the pandemic that is anti-Black
racism has ever moved the world
all at once.
George Floyd’s death was the
proverbial straw. Before him
there were too many others.
Say their names: Breonna Taylor.
Ahmaud Arbery. Tony McDade.
Manuel Ellis. Emantic Fitzgerald
Bradford. Sandra Bland. Terence
Crutcher. Aiyana Stanley-Jones.
Renisha McBride. Philando
Castile. Michael Brown Jr. Eric
Garner. Tamir Rice. Charleena
Lyles. Jordan Davis. John
Crawford III. Walter Scott. Sean
Bell. Trayvon Martin. Freddie
Gray. Amadou Diallo. Oscar
Grant. Anton Sterling. Malice
Green. And countless others
whose names may escape me at
the moment, and whose names
we do not publicly know.
Some of us thought COVID was
the great equalizer. Everyone was
ordered to shelter in place and
social distance because people
of all races and ethnicities were
testing positive, many dying. In
three months, more than 100,000
people in the United States died
from the disease.