Dear Students, Friends, and Colleagues,
Two weeks before a new President took the oath of office in Washington, on a day known to Christians as epiphany, I was driving west out of Savannah Georgia on Interstate 15, having spent the previous day helping citizens who needed rides vote in the Georgia runoff election. When I received a text from my best friend, a Congressman from Maryland, who told me that he was OK but was still locked down at the U.S. Capitol, then still under siege, I realized just how perilously fragile life and democracy are in this pandemic moment. The previous day I had worn, along with fifteen Durham voting rights activists, KN-95 masks all day when providing citizens rides to the polls. But no mask could save us from the virus of white supremacy or the violence committed by its adherents in the name of democracy.
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