On Sunday, 27 August 2017, Yahosh Bonner and Calee Reed released a dynamic cover of R. Kelly’s “Gotham City.” Their rendering of the song is called “In Our City” and delivers the powerful message that what is needed in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our country at this hour is love, peace, and justice.
If we watch the local news broadcasts or read the daily news, most us would no doubt agree that we are living in times of confusion and unrest. Instead of communities uniting together to help build bridges of hope, love, peace, and understanding, we often see proverbial walls of division being constructed and reinforced with mortar and bricks of hatred, violence, and injustice.
At all cost, hatred should always be our foe, and never our friend. We must learn that we can never combat hatred with more hatred. Hatred only begets more hatred. Hatred towards another stifle any chance for reasoning and understanding and alienates love completely. It receives its nourishment from unrelenting anger and pent-up frustration and has a disdain for people in general. The only way to combat hatred is through love and a genuine understanding which in time tears down the walls and barriers of division which hatred has built, thus creating an atmosphere of peace, love, harmony, and unity.
That is the overarching message of the music video “In Our City.” Hatred causes nothing but pain and misery, but love brings about final restoration and reconciliation. Hatred, more times than not, does far more damage to the hater than it does to the hated. It is a cancer of the soul. It gives no peace and always seeks to justify its means with no real, lasting satisfaction in the end. What we need is “A city of justice, a city of love, a city of peace for every one of us. Because we all need it, can’t live without it, in our city.”
