We are no different from the Atlanta killer

We are no different from the Atlanta killer, Robert Aaron Long. 

The colonial capitalist patriarchy, and its associated structures and institutions, reinforces the cultivation of inner hatred and oppression in each of us. The system breeds this inner hatred and oppression, seeking ultimately to keep us divided. 

To believe we are separate from this white man who murdered eight innocent people in Atlanta would confine us to exactly what the system wants - supremacist ways. To view ourselves as different from him keeps us from seeing the complexities of our human experience as well as the structural systems that entrap all of us. To hate him and everything he represents in return will keep us deluded from the healing we all desperately need individually and collectively.  

Robert Aaron Long is unfortunately an ugly mirror for each of us. To see how gruesomely and tragically our inner pain can unravel left ignored. To see where within us do we hold our own hatred or dislike of self, shame and non-acceptance, and fear of not being loved or seen as who we are. To see where in our own life do we wield harm towards ourselves and those around us. 

All of us cause harm. To ourselves. To each other. To other living beings. To the earth. We mistreat those we love most. We self brutalize in our minds and beat down our own bodies. We kill animals for food. We destroy the ocean and create toxins in the air. We have addictions to substances, greed, money, and security. We can abuse and traumatize ourselves and each other, often without even knowing. 

While there may be a scale to the degree of harm caused by our actions and behaviors, should any level of it be acceptable? 

As an Asian American woman, I have vacillated uncontrollably between bouts of angry rage and deep anguish, grieving endlessly for the violence towards and deaths of Asian people. I have struggled to find empathy for these perpetrators, yet know intimately the systems that created their inner hate. I am attempting to hold both and. Upon learning about the Atlanta deaths, my mind immediately thought of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the generations of countless Black and Brown bodies taken from this earth. I am angry at a system that would allow a white man, after killing four, to get 40 miles away to kill another four, while a Black man using counterfeit money died with a knee to his neck. 

No system of harm should be accepted. No level of harm should be accepted. 

And not accepting harm must start within each of us.