I have been writing and rewriting this letter for a month. It is not time-sensitive, but it is urgent.

There are things we — everyone including this writer — don’t want to look at, so we don’t. I don’t want to acknowledge how very close we are to a nuclear war that would pretty much extinguish life on Earth, my life and your life included. If I look, I will have to question my government’s willingness to let that happen.

If I look at the climate crisis, I have to face another way of dying, right along with the polar bears, and wonder how my country can still be thinking it can build more pipelines and enter into more wars — the greatest polluter of all.

If I make myself look at our military budget that grows every year, no matter who is in the White House, while U.S. children live (and die) without enough food or health care, I have to ask, “What kind of government is that?” I’d rather think there is a real choice between candidates for president, and I can help the better one make changes.

If I look at who can vote and who is carefully barred from voting, I might have to examine whether I live in a democracy or a disguised oligarchy. If I see how police forces across the country are being militarized, and how they will shoot unarmed protesters like Tortuguita in Atlanta, Georgia … if I allow myself to take that in, I have to conclude that I live in a police state, not in a country whose Constitution protects peaceful dissent. Did my Black sisters and brothers already know that?

I don’t want to look. But I can’t turn my back on my fellow humans. I can’t betray my place in this universe, call it Mother Earth, call it God’s creation, call it home. Don’t I have to look, and then do something? Will you look too? Can we stand together, no matter if we are only a few; no matter what the odds seem to be?

Sherrill Hogen, a privileged white woman, lives in Charlemont on unceded Pocumtuck land and believes in reparations and grace.

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