#irunwithmaud

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25 year old black man, was out for a run in a neighborhood outside of Brunswick, Georgia. He was followed, confronted, and shot to death by two white men who claimed he might have been involved in burglaries in the area.

He was just a person, going for a run, something that I do every single day.

Today would have been Ahmaud’s 26th birthday, and for that reason, I split my run in to 3 segments of 2.23 miles each for February 23, to honor Ahmaud’s life and his family.

I do suspicious looking things on my runs all the time:
1.) I wear sunglasses on every run, no matter how overcast or rainy it is.
2.) I wear a hood pulled up over my hat if it is rainy or cold.
3.) I have all kinds of things bulging out of my pockets: phone, water bottle, keys, fruit chews, gloves.
4.) I stop in front of houses and take pictures of flowers, trees, birds, Christmas and Halloween decorations.
5.) I will run back forth in front of the same houses several times.

And I am met with smiles and waves from my neighbors of all races, because I am white and I am a woman.

Today I ran in the rain with my baseball cap pulled down, sunglasses on, pockets bulging with a bulky phone and a water bottle, and every single person I saw smiled and waved at me.

This is the America I want for all runners, not just me.

It breaks my heart that it is 2020 and that this is still happening and that we have done nothing to address centuries long white privilege where two white men can just shoot someone for jogging and possibly would never have been prosecuted for it if video evidence had not emerged.

We need to do better.