My thanks to Peggy Chinn for reviewing this post and making such helpful suggestions.

I’ve been reminded this week on a very personal level of how precious life is. All life, although I acknowledge that to some that may seem disrespectful. It is not meant to be. Black Lives Matter is an important movement that arose in response to the disproportionate number of Black men killed by police. I applaud it for that. Slogans play an important role in raising public awareness but sometimes it is easy to forget their intent and use them for one’s own purposes. I have some concerns that, like any meme, it can and has been misconstrued and used to justify violence against others.

Recently, Toronto’s pride parade was stopped by a Black Lives Matter group because they insisted a police float in the parade be removed. I am concerned that recent shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge may be a violent aberration of the intent of the movement. Others seem to share that concern. Some Black Lives Matter leaders have called for peace and an end to violence. I have seen no more poignant call for peace than by the mother of Alton Sterling’s son this past week. And I have seen no more courageous action to demonstrate peaceful resistance than that by a nurse, Lesha Evans, captured in what has quickly become an iconic photograph epitomizing peace in action (Downloaded from http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/latest/photo-news/black-lives-matter-protest-photo-goes-viral-86659).

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first International Conference on Health Promotion. The Ottawa Charter that resulted from that meeting identified a number of prerequisites to health. Although there is no indication that they are listed in order of any importance, the first among them is peace. The last are social justice and equity. The list was a precursor for what have since been described and researched as social determinants of health. Many of the others listed, such as food, income, education, and shelter many of us are privileged to take for granted; yet many cannot and they experience the increased morbidity and mortality that results when the prerequisites are absent. Lesha Evans wwalked the walk of promoting peace at great risk to herself and it applaud her actions as a Black person, a woman, and a nurse.

But I think of others who haven’t formed such a visible movement as Black Lives Matter but who are disenfranchised and often systematically treated poorly and unjustly – I think of Aboriginal people, homeless people, refugees, those with mental illness, those who we make “the other” whether because of race, color, gender, religion, sexual orientation or who find themselves at a place where two or more of these factors intersect. There could be a long list of “______ lives matter.” In thinking of them, I would like to say Black lives matter AND all lives matter.