Let me begin by making my stance crystal clear: Black Lives Matter.

Readers may or may not already know that I live in the Twin Cities—the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area in Minnesota. My cities have been in the news a lot these last couple of weeks after a white, then-member of the Minneapolis Police Department knelt on the neck of a Black man named George Floyd, resulting in Floyd’s death. Since then protests and riots have erupted across the world.

This certainly feels like one of those historic Moments—something the Doctor might pop in to visit, to witness in person. I almost thought I’d gotten used to that feeling, to recognizing in realtime the unfolding of events that future generations (should humanity survive) will see as significant. The year 2020 has kept us all on our toes, though, and every time I’m still caught by surprise. “Wow,” I think to myself as something new crops up. “This is huge.”

The thing is, of course, that none of us can know just how huge any moment—any movement—will become. So what I try to remember is that if it’s something I believe in, I have to take part. No matter how small or powerless I feel in the face of massive, far-reaching societal injustices, I have to do something.

I’m white. I’m privileged along a large number of axes. I’ve been steeping in racist thinking pretty much my whole life, because that’s the perspective my culture has taught me. It has been painful to realize how thoroughly I’ve been misled, the kinds of things that have been deliberately left out of my education. There are assumptions I’ve made that have taken root in me so thoroughly that I can hardly even see them when they’re pointed out to me.

And it’s my job to try to change the world, starting with myself.

It’s super uncomfortable to think that maybe I wouldn’t have been able to secure my mortgage if my skin color were different, or that I might never have made it to the interview stage in my various job searches. It’s awful to think that the schools that get the best funding are those in affluent neighborhoods with high property taxes—ones where Black folks have been systemically kept from living—and that my skin color would afford me a better chance of buying property there. I hate realizing all the ways I’ve been given an unfair advantage, but it’s my responsibility to confront those issues head-on and start looking for ways to dismantle the system that’s designed that way.

Not everyone can march. Not everyone can organize or lead activism work in their community. Not everyone can give money to organizations supporting those efforts. But everyone can do something. So I encourage you—especially if you have societal privileges granted by race, gender, economic status or whatever—to do whatever it is that you can, to find some way to step up and add your voice to the call for justice.

You know the Doctor would.