Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter.

It is with great concern that I write this, as the country seems to be upside down over the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and then a dozen police officers targeted and gunned down in Dallas, Texas, of which 5 have died as of the writing of this blog.

First off, Black Lives Matter.  There does seem to be a systemic racism against people of color, in which they seem to be targeted by the justice system a lot more, often resulting in fatal arrests whereas people with less melanin in their skin do not end up dead.

Equally important, Blue Lives Matter.  Targeting and killing cops is not a solution either.  These people don their uniforms everyday to serve and protect everyone.

Black and Blue Lives Matter are not mutually exclusive.  I have seen in my Facebook feed that people tend to choose sides.  Either Black or Blue lives, but not both.  This is a very dangerous stance, because it seems to put colored people against policemen and policemen against colored people.  This is very wrong.  Most cops aren't bad.  Most black people aren't bad.  (Most people in general aren't bad.)  And we have to operate on the idea that most people are good and act in good conscience.  

As in all groups, there's always a bad apple (yes, even in your group), and those people should be held accountable for all wrongdoing, especially murder, whether it be a murder of a black life, blue life, or whatever other color.  They say justice is blind, but apparently, in this country, not color blind.

Also, which is it?  We hear from gun advocates that people should carry guns to stave off violence.  However, when Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were killed, "they shouldn't have had guns on them".  I don't hear the NRA coming to their defense.  Have we become accustomed to white privilege so much that this is not an outrage?

Just some thoughts.  We cannot be silent anymore.  Not taking sides is taking sides with the oppressor, as Elie Wiesel said.

Blog writing in the middle of the night.

It is common practice for writers, to write their pieces well ahead of publishing.  This is also true of most bloggers, and most of my blog posts (though there are some, like today's, that come from the hip).

For me, inspiration tends to come in the middle of the night.  Usually, I just jot it down, or I hope that I can remember it in the morning, but last night, I was awake when inspiration struck.  I have a few blog posts that are outlined or written (and in need of editing), and I have a few topics to write about.

I got so excited writing and coming up with possible topics that I totally lost track of time, and went to sleep fairly late for my taste (12:30am - I'm like a child -  I need to go to sleep early and sleep a lot to function well).  This comes after promising my boyfriend that I would go to sleep way earlier than that.  So when I told him this morning that I didn't go to sleep as early as I had promised, he told me to write a blog about that.  So here I am, writing a blog about it.  (I love you, sweetheart!)

That said, I hope to someday gain readers, and I also hope to provide such readers with magnificent content.  For such hopes to be fulfilled, I need to be inspired and ready to write.  And I need to come up with content at least weekly, and I need to write much, even if it means in the middle of the night.  So, with this in mind, I can't continue to rely on trying to remember in the morning what it is that I thought about in the middle of the night.  Anyway, enough rambling. :)