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How is it surprising
That there are more BAME frontline workers than white.
Whether that’s as doctors and nurses or shopkeepers and transport workers.
How is it surprising.
Only to the people who used to turn a blind eye to these workers
Is it surprising.
Only to the people who voted to kick these folks out of the country
Is it surprising.
That now,
It’s these workers who decide if these people live or die.
If the very people,
who allowed these very workers to be paid minimum wage for
the life-line they provide,
Who chose to cut government funding which would provide hospitals with equipment
And give support for the people who put their lives on the line,
Are worthy of a life;
How is it surprising
That the society we live in values the economy over lives,
When so many examples provide evidence that this was life for some time.
Like the fact a third of homeless people
Die of treatable conditions.
Or that five football pitches every minute of rainforest are cleared
Leaving the indigenous tribes and animals,
Without their habitat.
Without their home.
How is it surprising
That a black man is shot and the white murderers are allowed to walk free
In America today.
How is it surprising
That people with less privilege are
more likely to die from Covid-19.
More likely to suffer.
From not only the virus but the rest of its effects.
How is it surprising
That Trump and Johnson are two world leaders of today.
Both racist in their own way.
How is it surprising
That a woman earns 81 cents for every dollar earned by a man,
How is it surprising
That Trans people are having their rights
Taken away “due” to this virus.
How is it surprising
That people with disabilities are seen as less of a priority to save.
How is it surprising.
It’s not surprising.
It has been this way for too long
Only now
Have they made those unwilling, see a peek,
Of what many unaffected try so desperately
Not to seek.
They find it surprising.
We knew it already.
What is surprising
Is how long it has taken for them
To see
What was right in front of them
What is so surprising
Is how they still sit back expecting us to continue fighting and for them to be entertained
Like humanity’s and animals’ and this very Earth’s existence
Is just a five-a-side.
What is surprising
Is the fact that we as a society aren’t acting
Aren’t actually listening
We always want to know the truth
But only some are supposedly “right” to act on it
What is surprising
Is the fact they are hypnotised
By the thing we seek to correct
The very privileges they freak out about and rescue from the
Unwanted, prying hands of us
The ones they forget
That's what is surprising.
Surprising should not be the norm,
But it is to the majority.
That’s why it's not surprising.
No matter how much it destroys our brain
To think that the world we live in
Is this way.
No matter how many people
We see dying mentally and physically
Due to this world we live in.
When you think about how long it has been this way,
How is it surprising?
We all saw it go this way.
We can track almost every decision that led us to this point.
But we also can rise above it.
We can change the system.
We can listen and act.
Let's be “surprising” for once.
So then we are
“What is so surprising”.
BY Yasmin Herron-Isa