Arizona Cardinals’ wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, a native of Minneapolis, says the city has been turned upside down, but remains hopeful that change is coming. The NFL legend wrote a new essay regarding the state of the country The New York Times, Sunday.

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“The events of the last several days have turned Minneapolis, and our nation, upside down. Injustice, death, destruction, pain, violence, protests, and riots have made it clear — we as a nation are not OK. We are not healthy,” Fitzgerald writes. “The violent death of George Floyd in police custody is yet another example of a systemic problem we have yet to solve. A cancer we are failing to cut out. People and communities are suffering, lives are being lost and futures are being destroyed.”

Fitzgerald goes on to write that the voice of the unheard cannot continue to be ignored: “We must refuse to allow the screams of the unheard to be disregarded,” he wrote. “We must act. Good people may find themselves a part of a broken system but must take it upon themselves to bring about the needed change. If you are silent and passive you are complicit in upholding the status quo.”

Check out Fitzgerald’s full essay here.

[Via]