Inhale and Exhale.

Photo Credit: Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

Location: White House, Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

We must breathe to keep our hearts beating and blood flowing. But, so many of life’s challenges threaten to or actually do suffocate us. COVID-19 has literally suffocated nearly 260,000 Americans so far. Racial oppression, a heavy cloud that’s hung over Black Americans since 1619, has suffocated the enslaved builders of this nation and their descendants. It has suffocated the massacred Native Americans on whose stolen land the United States was constructed. As John Legend says, freedom is like a religion to us. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are sacraments. Fighting to sustain the sanctity of these sacraments for all people is an act of worship. That means advocating for LGBTQIA+ people’s right to live in peace and with dignity by championing just policies for all. That means creating a world where all women are treated equally. Let that world, to which we aspire, not allow privilege to obscure humanity. We all must be allowed access to food, water, and shelter. We all must be allowed to breathe. Ensuring everyone can inhale—and won’t have to wait to exhale—is Community Renewal Society’s mission. Please consider supporting our efforts to create a just Chicago and Illinois.

Peace be with you.

By Rev. Jason Carson Wilson, M. Div. 

Rev. Jason Carson Wilson, M. Div. is the Bayard Rustin Fellow for Community Renewal Society.