What is this movement’s endgame, what are we working toward? What are the real problems and their possible solutions?

I don’t know how to do it and I’m trying to figure out how to learn how to do it, but I think we do need to make some fundamental changes to our political and economic systems—to get at the root causes of our problems. Free markets in both sectors have bred much success, but they have also resulted in where we’re at today. We need some checks, some regulation, on markets in our society. Let’s focus on a couple political facets.

I think we need to create the conditions in which several political parties can successfully operate in the political arena. We can change our first-past-the-post election process, abolish the Electoral College, or try other means. But I believe having a larger number of political parties, say 7 or 8, would incentivize a few things. It would basically require parties to be more representative of their declared constituents and more clear in their ideals and policy, in order to distinguish themselves from their rivals. It would also incentivize cooperation within all branches of government at every level, because in order for any given political party to succeed, it would need to work with the others. Parties would need to engage and communicate and debate and compromise. When there are only 2 parties present, they are much more incentivized to maintain their power than they are to actually effect change, and this results in citizen disenfranchisement and the broken process we see today. We must change this.

I hope it’s also become obvious that we need to divorce the corporate world from politics and better regulate campaign finance. Whether reversing Citizens United v. FEC is enough or different or more drastic action is needed, I’m not sure, but we need to incentivize the right kind of people to run for election, and we need to ensure once in government they are incentivized to work for their constituents, not to maintain the interests of corporations. Governance is hard; we want people who truly want to effect change, who are willing to endure the arduous labor inherent in governance to achieve results. Political actors cannot be held hostage to lobbyism and big business—they must be independent, free thinking, and holistic in their patriotism and service.

I bring up these political issues because it’s from that domain real policy change will occur. In order to change the fundamentals of the system, we need our politics to work for and by the people.

Black Lives Matter has achieved some important things. It’s woken people up about the existing prejudice within our system. Now we need to determine the causal roots and decide the most efficient and effective ways to change them. White people around the country now better understand their inherited white privilege. That’s good. Police brutality is being publicly discussed, and that’s good. Police reform is happening—that’s good. But some of the solutions being offered don’t appear to be solutions to me. I understand “defund the police” is the expression being used to discuss allocating funding and resources differently to best serve citizens. But when has taking away money ever solved a problem? How about we reduce the number of different scenarios police respond to, but keep the budget the same—now we can recruit better officers and conduct more training so they are better at their jobs. We have the funding to prevent burnout and mitigate the crazy amount of stress experienced on the job. What if we also create more community outreach, and create a new branch of public servants that respond to mental health situations? Yes that requires even more money, but it would also better address the problems about which people are protesting.

I’ve written before that these issues are nuanced. White people owning their white privilege does not equate to everyone in modern America being racist. Police reform can help alleviate much of the civilian-peace officer conflict, but taking money away from the institution only makes it harder to do so.

We have some real problems, and the current movement has brought them out into the open. It’s integral at this juncture to determine what are the true causes and focus on eliminating them. I don’t know if I would go so far to say our system is broken—there is also a lot of good—but it’s vital that we address and solve our problems sooner rather than later. It will take consideration, and focus, and science. It requires awareness and a huge amount of effort. But it’s worth it, and we can do it. We can change the world.