Today is Juneteenth. On this day we who are designated as white acknowledge our complicity in helping to create and perpetuate an unequal and unjust society where our Black sisters and brothers are catching hell. We acknowledge our complicity in what Dorothy Day called this dirty, filthy, rotten system that values some life more than others. We proclaim today with one heart and one voice and in solidarity with all whom we have harmed that Black Lives Matter, and we pledge that we will use our power and influence and sacred office to listen with a pastor’s heart to the cries of God’s people of African descent, to join in lament for the crimes committed in our names, and to participate in actions that put our bodies on the line for justice and conciliation.