It is hard to appreciate a feeling of thankfulness today, given the ongoing events in Ferguson, which painfully represent events, practices, and ways of thinking throughout the United States and the world. I feel heartbroken that our society continues to fail black people in such a violent and dehumanizing way. I am sick knowing that I benefit from the system that oppresses black Americans and black people around the world.

So, today, I give thanks for the noisy agitators whose efforts make a ubiquitous and unjust practice rise to the level of news. I am grateful for the hard work done for decades by people striving for the liberation of people not seen or recognized as people by the society they live in. I grieve for the need for their work, and I am so thankful to them for doing it. May there be less cause for their work in the future.