Thirty years ago, on October 23, 1987, Eleanor Morrison and I filed incorporation papers for LEAVEN, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing resources, education, and training in the areas of feminism, anti-racism, spiritual development, and sexual justice. We chose the name “Leaven” to express our commitment to providing support and nurture for those who seek to be leavening agents for change – resisting oppression, engendering hope. Our organizational motto exclaimed: “If we would be as leaven, there could be an uprising of hope.”

My Facebook feed and my own posts are full of outrage at what occurred in Charlottesville and how Trump has revealed himself to be an apologist and enabler of white terrorism. In the wake of Charlottesville, many of my white friends are calling on white people to declare where we stand in relation to white supremacy; to decide which side of history we are on.

I believe that our declarations are important, even essential. But I don’t believe they are enough.

Dear White People:

Earlier this week, in another outrageous, egregious miscarriage of justice, the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury failed to indict the white police officer who killed a 12-year-old black child, Tamir Rice. And once again the justification for letting a uniformed murderer go free is that the officer believed he was in mortal danger.

Not since 1977 has a full moon adorned the Christmas sky. In honor of this stunning moon and in memory of my mother, Eleanor S. Morrison, I’m sharing this poem written last February on the anniversary of her death.

Dear White People,

Difficult as it may be, you and I must listen to and grapple with the words that Dylann Roof spoke as he began shooting the people who warmly, graciously welcomed him into that Bible study circle at Emmanuel AME Church.

“You are raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.”

Those words are a mirror for us as a people – as white people.

At a time when some presidential candidates, elected officials, and pundits are maliciously and falsely labeling Syrian refugees, Muslims, and Black Lives Matter activists “a terrorist threat,” let’s review events of the past few days to determine who constitutes the real threat.

The work I do and the person I am bear the indelible imprint and modeling of my father, Truman A. Morrison, Jr. (1918-2006). In such a time as this, I miss him more than I can say.

My father believed racism was a white problem and that he, as a white man, would be held accountable by his Creator for what he did or failed to do to confront, name, and mend this deep wound in the soul of America. As he was fond of declaring from the pulpit:“

I cannot turn away or close my eyes to what I beheld on Saturday as I watched the verdict in the Michael Brelo case being rendered by Judge P. O’Donnell in Cleveland. The nearly hour-long justification for exonerating Officer Brelo on all counts was bone chilling to behold. In every respect, it amounted to a judicial justification for state-sanctioned lynching.