We should be upset when the police kill *anyone* unnecessarily, but the reason why George Floyd's death resonates so powerfully is because it's a microcosm for all the ways our society treats black people. It's not just about police brutality and misconduct.

I'm a white father of black kids. I *see* the patterns already happening with them: being followed around in stores, being singled out in groups for hostile questioning, being called the n-word.

So really the message of my poem is about pushing back at all the ways the world is already starting to try to push down on my kids. That we're not going to accept the status quo.