Your life matters to me.

At the rally in memory of Trayvon Martin held today in Portland, Avel Gordly  asked all the black men in the audience to come up on the stage with her so that we could see them and acknowledge them as endangered beings in the racist society in which we live. Then she asked the rest of us to hold out our hands to them,  to honor them, and to tell them, "I see you. You matter to me. Your life matters to me."

Rev. William Sinkford  said, "We have to tell all our children that we have failed. We have failed to make the world safe for them. We have failed to create the beloved community. There is much work for them to do." Full text of his speech is here.

It was a solemn rally, a time to comfort each other and to re-commit ourselves to building a more compassionate world, a more just world, a less racist world. We have a long way to go.

I think there may have been a thousand four hundred people there. I had hoped for a larger crowd. After about an hour, the crowd set off on a march, but I wasn't up to joining them.

A full set of pictures is here.