The Dominican Sisters of Springfield join the many others in our civic community to address the tragedy that befell our city on December 18, 2022, when one of our citizens, Mr. Earl Moore, Jr, was killed by “compression and positional asphyxia” inflicted upon him by the very persons he called for assistance, two LifeStar EMTs.
Black Lives Matter Springfield, the Springfield NAACP, the Springfield Immigrant Advocacy Network, the Springfield Coalition on Dismantling Racism, and distinguished administrators at SIU School of Medicine have issued or endorsed passionate, eloquent statements about the tragedy that has come home to us: the death of one more person of color at the hands of those meant to protect, heal, and serve.
We concur with and support their cries for justice and their concerns about the erosion of trust within Springfield’s minoritized communities.
To their lament we add ours: a cry for all of us—every one of us regardless of our race, ethnicity, or skin color—to admit to ourselves and to the world, that our souls are sick and our hearts weary unto death of the damage a 400-year history of racial oppression and white privilege have wreaked on our nation. It is time for us to be clear: unless and until white citizens of our nation do the hard work of owning the painful history of enslavement, unless and until we examine our collective conscience, unless we once and for all, decide as a nation to seek healing from the evil done to our souls by continued racial oppression and our enculturated insistence on the supremacy of whiteness, unless we ourselves repent and repair—the soul sickness we suffer will not heal and we will never truly be free.
