Category: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging

Truth and reconciliation could provide a pathway towards healing American race relations

Posted on by NationSwell Team

In the summer of 2020, America found itself in the throes of a full-blown racial reckoning. 

The product of the longstanding history of violence and police killings that the Black community has been disproportionately subjected to, the tensions crescendoed with the murder of the unarmed Minnesota man George Floyd in May. Over the course of the weeks that followed, outraged Americans flocked to the streets around the country to demand accountability and a national acknowledgment of the need for racial justice. The resultant protests were the most widely-attended in U.S. history, with as many as 26 million people estimated to have attended.

But nearly two years later, though the city-wide standoffs with police that once dotted the country have dissipated, many of the questions they raised remain unanswered. How can a country with a history steeped in racism and violence ever hope to redress its sins and create a more safe and equitable social landscape? What will it take for America to heal?

For some, the answer lies in truth and reconciliation — the process by which persistent inequalities are addressed through careful fact-gathering and supervised dialogues that seek to establish an objective version of historical events. Proponents of truth and reconciliation processes believe that confronting and reckoning with the past is necessary in order for successful transitions from conflict and resentment to peace and connectedness to occur. In bringing difficult issues into the light, truth and reconciliation commissions seek to provide a pathway towards healing, usually by rooting out solutions and establishing a set of concrete steps towards rectifying past injustices. 

In most cases, these commissions are often established as a way for members of dominant and marginalized communities  to come together to publicly acknowledge instances of conflict and pain. They’ve famously been assembled to dissect the legacy of Apartheid in South Africa, and to assess the human rights violations that occurred during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial rule of Chile.

In the United States, activists and community organizers have led the calls for the establishment of formalized, government-sponsored truth and reconciliation commissions to examine America’s racialized history of violence and oppression — hopefully catalyzing individuals and organizations alike to the realization of the specific ways they may benefit from the legacy of chattel slavery, segregation, and police violence. But even without formal government backing, there are grassroots groups working tirelessly across America to achieve the goals of truth and reconciliation on a smaller scale, taking a similar model and infusing it with compassion and empathy in the hopes of repairing community fractures and fostering peace at the local level. 

One such group is Heal America, an organization that began in earnest in Dallas in 2016 after an explosion of anguished protest in response to the police killings of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, threatened to plunge the city into chaos. Much like the 2020 protests that resulted from the murder of George Floyd, Sterling and Castile’s deaths were the impetus for widescale national demonstrations in cities across the U.S. During the protests in Dallas, a lone gunman opened fire on a line of police officers, killing five and injuring 11 others. With conditions in the city threatening to devolve into a full-blown insurrection, local police tapped Bishop Omar Jahwar — a longtime gang interventionist and community leader — to lead the community towards healing. 

Jahwar — who died in 2021 after contracting COVID-19 — understood innately that the first step towards brokering peace during a conflict must necessarily include an acknowledgement of the pain being felt on both sides. He invited the grieving loved ones of Alton Sterling to speak onstage at a restaurant on Dallas’s south side, followed by the widows of two of the slain Dallas police officers. The civil rights activists, victims of violence, members of law enforcement and public leaders in attendance all watched as the family members embraced after finding mutual understanding in each other’s pain. 

That single event was such a success that Heal America was founded around it in order to further its mission, propped up by the belief that people are not only capable of difficult conversations, but that they can find strength — rather than division — in their differences. In the years that followed, Heal America went national, and has hosted events in cities like Dallas, Atlanta, Jackson, Missississippi, and Los Angeles. 

In each city, the movement convenes dedicated local individuals who wield the principles of love and redemption in an effort to address injustice, and then works to support those changemakers by providing funding, networking and storytelling opportunities, and other avenues to bolster healing.

During a recent Heal America tour stop in Pittsburgh, for example, Leon Ford — a 19-year-old who was shot in the back five times by a police officer, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down — convened non-profit leaders, community influencers, the mayor, and local law enforcement for a frank and inspiring conversation about how to shift the city away from focusing on racial divisions and towards collaborations that would tackle some of its most pressing racial injustices head-on.

Rather than turning inwards, focusing on anger and bitterness, Ford focused his energy on fostering constructive engagement — a perfect encapsulation of the Heal America model, and an example of the power modern grassroots truth and reconciliation models hold in shaping communities.

Branden Polk, the director of strategic partnerships at Heal America, told NationSwell that the movement is growing at a pivotal moment for America — one in which many people are feeling fatigued and hopeless by our seemingly deepening political and social divides.

“More than two out of every three Americans recognize racism remains a problem today, but in a climate of increasing polarization and declining social trust, it’s difficult for many people to see a way forward,” he said. “The extremes perpetuate a false choice that we must either deny our country and its values or deny the racial injustices that persist. It’s not the dominant view. But it’s the loudest one.”

The American definition of “justice” is a warped one, focused more on ideas about punitive systems and vengeance than it is on ideas about restoration and healing. But Heal America — and the truth and reconciliation process more broadly — is focused exactly on the place where solutions can help to foment real community change and relief.

“Polarization is rising. Americans’ trust in each other is falling. And it’s making it hard for people to come together on many issues, especially the difficult ones,” Polk said. “Heal America is helping people to come together — offering a way to address racial injustice by focusing on solutions and creating the space for diverse perspectives.”

An overdue shift in the modern workplace

Posted on by NationSwell Team

NationSwell had the opportunity to interview Kane-Williams about why this moment is so pivotal for organizations striving towards equity and justice

Anthony Smith, VP of Published Content and Growth, NationSwell: Does the modern workplace have a generational equity problem?

Edna Kane-Williams, EVP and Chief Diversity Officer, AARP: There is a shift going on in the modern workplace, but I hate to label it as a problem — it is an opportunity. For the first time in history, we now have a five-generation workplace. We have our traditionalists or folks commonly known as the Silent Generation who were born in the ’40s, we have Baby Boomers who were born in the ’50s and early ’60s, we have generation X, we have Millennials, and we have Generation Z. A five-generation workplace can present challenges to employers and organizations, because it is a new phenomenon. Something new suggests the need for trainings, solutions, and approaches that workplaces have not used in the past.

NationSwell: What are some numbers, case studies, or examples that spell out that opportunity?

Kane-Williams: We learned in a survey conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that AARP participated in that 53% of employers do not include age as a factor in their diversity and inclusion policies. When thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, employers tend to focus on race, ethnicity, gender orientation, gender selection, sexual orientation, disability, and ability status, but they do not include age, even though 70% of the executives surveyed favored taking steps to promote unbiased recruitment practices. And when we talk about unbiased recruitment practices, certainly at AARP, we are focused on the older worker, but when you talk to Gen Z workers, they also face age-related challenges in the workplace. Two out of three executives surveyed said they would purposely design mixed-aged teams to leverage the advantages of both younger and older employees. 

People used to retire at 60, 62, 65 years old, but now they are working longer, both out of choice and because people live longer. This is especially true for folks who are less privileged and from marginalized populations — Black and Brown folks, in particular — because many of them do not have a choice about retirement because they do not have the retirement savings accounts and safety nets in place that they need. With us living longer — into our 80s, 90s, in some cases, 100s — many people cannot afford to leave the workforce at 65 years old and have a 35-year retirement. Meaning 35 years of no income, no wages. So, as workers age, we need to make sure they can fully participate in the workplace. Across the board, we have to make sure all workers feel the workplace accommodates their needs, regardless of their age.

NationSwell: What are some concrete steps that organizational leaders can take to make sure that this unprecedented five-generation workplace is inclusive for every type of worker — old, young, and in between?

Kane-Williams: Training. I do not think we can assume people are going to come to the table with the skills they need. For both managers and team members, we need special trainings to ensure we are accommodating to people of all ages so they can thrive in a five-generation workplace. To do this, we can take some cues from the diversity, equity, and inclusion process. For example, microaggressions — you hear that term often in trainings and it typically applies to situations that involve race and ethnicity — there are microaggressions around age, as well. I’m the mother of three millennials, and if you talk to them, they feel like millennials encounter microaggressions around their age all the time in the workplace. People from other generations will say millennials are entitled and they do not want to work hard and find an easy way out. My children are offended by these generalizations and comments.

Older populations, people in my age range, also face stereotypes such as, not understanding technology, not on social media, and slow to adapt to change. All those beliefs are mired, whether you are younger or older, in stereotypes that have no business in the workplace. So the biggest thing employers need to invest in for a five-generation workplace is: One, trainings and two, protections — as we say in the Living, Learning and Earning Longer (LLEL) initiative, everyone ages so workplaces need to make sure people can be reskilled and upskilled. 

NationSwell: How are workplaces getting age inclusion right?

Kane-Williams: The World Economic Forum, OECD, and AARP have partnered together for the LLEL initiative. Through LLEL, we have found the tremendous benefits of a multigenerational workforce as it strengthens companies’ resilience, increases productivity and GDP, and opens the doors for new markets and creativity. We also learned that a multigenerational workforce will raise capita by 19% over the next 3 decades speaking to the benefits of having Generation Z through the Silent Generation working side-by-side. 

Over 50% of companies surveyed by OECD did not include age in their DEI statements. For workplaces to get age inclusion right they should: include age in their DEI policies, use trainings and mentorship opportunities to ensure people understand each other’s strengths and challenges, and provide upskilling and reskilling opportunities for their workers.

NationSwell: What is your call to action for the people who will read this profile and see this conversation about all of the opportunities the five-generation workplace has to offer?

Kane-Williams: One call to action I already alluded to is to provide work opportunities for people to remain and grow on the job. Another is to ensure individuals remain employable throughout their lives through continued education and training. Third, is to enforce policies that prevent age discrimination and adopt age-inclusive policies. More and more companies are embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion; we need to ensure that age is a part of the DEI spectrum that companies’ policies address. Those are three key areas that AARP focuses on when we talk about creating opportunities for all five generations to work together and to grow together in the workplace. 

NationSwell: Is there anything else that I didn’t ask you about that you’d like to talk about?

Kane-Williams: At AARP, we focus on people ages 50 and older and often add “and their families” because we are committed to preventing age discrimination and preventing age stereotypes for all generations. We do not want generations competing with each other or over resources. Rather, AARP wants to take advantage of the extreme shifts we are experiencing in workplaces and workforces, the great resignation, and the great reshuffle and what the pandemic has meant in terms of working.

There is something extraordinary going on right now with intergenerational workforces and the workplace environment that we do not have a complete handle on yet, and it will compel all age groups and all interests to work collaboratively. It sounds ambitious but at AARP we want to lead the way on how five-generation workplaces can thrive.

Presented in partnership with AARP, a NationSwell Institutional Member.

A Note From NationSwell on the Surge in Violence Against AAPI Communities

Posted on by NationSwell Team

a supermarket snack run with my family. Ahead of me in line was a very nice lady who was having a very nice conversation with the cashier, also very nice.

As I bagged my groceries next to her, this very nice lady looked over at me, leaned in and said, “If you don’t know how to behave here, then maybe you and your family should go back to your country.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d experience racism in public for being Asian, nor would it be the last. But it’s the one that’s stuck with me while all the others blur together — how in one moment, a moment to which I bore witness, this person was so very kind and warm; and then, in the next moment, so cruel. 

I write to you, a little more than a decade later, amid a surge in targeted violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders that shows no signs of stopping; one that seemed to start last year, around the time our former president started referring to COVID-19 as “the China virus.” I’m writing to you just one month after a Filipino man was slashed on a New York City subway train, his cries for help ignored by his fellow passengers. I’m writing to you the morning after a gunman opened fire at an Asian-run spa in Georgia, killing eight people, at least six of them Asian women who worked there. According to a witness, the gunman screamed, “I’m going to kill all Asians.” While in custody, the suspect told police that he was driven not by racial animus but by a drive to “eliminate… temptation.” 

And as I write to you today to tell you that I am afraid, that I am grieving, and that I share in your fear and your grief, I am also thinking about that moment in that supermarket. I am thinking about how these problems may have been exacerbated by our last president’s rhetoric, but they didn’t start with him. And if they didn’t, then the solution cannot be short term, either.

Building it back better for all of us means that the solution must advance justice for every last one of us. The solution must start with acknowledgments, at the federal and state level, of the centuries of racism and systemic violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. 

We cannot fix this if we do not name it first.

A Note on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Posted on by NationSwell Team

To Our Community,

This year, as we reflect on Martin Luther King Jr’s legacy, we are thinking about the painful gap between the world as it should be and the horrors we witnessed during the January 06 insurrection. We’re thinking about how, as NationSwell speaker Clint Smith wrote, “a new iteration of white supremacist violence” reared is ugly head on that day. 

At the dawn of a sacred national holiday, we are deepening our commitment to dismantling the structures and cultural strains that perpetuate racial injustice in all of its forms. We are proud to stand with those who unequivocally denounce white supremacy. We join them in demanding accountability for last week’s acts of violence and terror — and for the leaders and organizations who fuel, abet or enable such acts. 

The past year has shown us too many searing images of racial injustice in all of its brutality and impunity. In those images and in this unprecedented time, however, lies the hope that we might finally do what we’ve not yet done: squarely and collectively look at the legacy and plague of racism, reckon with its toll and work together to realize the promise of a truly free nation.

Historians will consider the significance of January 06, 2021 for centuries. May the story they write be about how we seized one of our darkest days to begin a new chapter of reckoning, healing and progress. May we each, in our own way, marshal the will and resources to contribute a verse to that chapter.

Yours in solidarity,
The NationSwell Team

To Build It Back Better, Give Ourselves Permission to Feel

Posted on by NationSwell Team

For #BuildItBackBetter, NationSwell asked some of our nation’s most celebrated purpose-driven leaders how they’d build a society that is more equitable and resilient than the one we had before COVID-19. We have compiled and lightly edited their answers.

This article is part of the #BuildItBackBetter track “The Relational Era: Building a Culture of Connection, Bridging and Belonging” — presented in partnership with Einhorn Collaborative.

Let’s get the obvious question out of the way first: What’s up with that title? Since when does anybody need permission to feel? True, we all have feelings more or less continuously, every waking moment without ever asking or getting anyone’s approval. To stop feeling would be like to stop thinking, eating or breathing. Not possible.

Our emotions are a big part — maybe the biggest part — of what makes us human. And yet we go through life trying hard to pretend otherwise. 

Too often we do our best to deny or hide our feelings—even from ourselves. Our mindsets about them get passed along to our children, who learn by watching and listening to us, their caregivers and teachers—their role models. Our kids receive the message loud and clear, so that before long, they, too, have learned to suppress even the most urgent messages from deep inside. 

So we deny ourselves — and one another — permission to feel. We toughen up, squash it down and behave irrationally. We avoid the difficult conversation with a loved one; we explode at a colleague; and we go through an entire bag of chips and have no idea why. When we deny ourselves the permission to feel, a long list of unwanted outcomes ensues. We lose the ability to even perceive what we’re feeling — it’s like, without noticing, we go a little numb inside. When that happens, we’re unable to understand what’s happening in our lives that’s causing it. Because of that we’re unable to label it, so we can’t express it clearly, either, in ways the people around us would understand.

And when we can’t identify how we feel, it’s impossible for us to do anything productive about our feelings: to use them wisely — to accept and embrace them all. In order to build a culture of connection, bridging, and belonging – in our homes, schools, workplaces and communities – we must learn to make our emotions work for us, not against us.

I’ve spent the last 25 years trying to unpack these issues. Through academic research and plenty of real-life experience, especially in the world of education. I also have a personal interest in the bad things that happen when we deny ourselves permission to feel. Meaning I’ve been there, but thanks to a host of interventions and one special person, in particular, I made it out alive. 

Only a few naturally insightful among us can claim to have these “emotion skills” without consciously pursuing them. I had to learn them. And these are real skills. People from all backgrounds with all personality types will find them accessible and even life-changing. And they can be acquired by anyone of almost any age.

These skills can be used privately, but their best application is throughout a community, so that a network emerges to reinforce its own influence. I have seen this happen—our whole-school approach to social and emotional learning, RULER, is being deployed in thousands of schools all over the world, with incredible results. 

A number of years ago, I was training leaders in an underperforming school district. At lunch on the first day, I was standing in the buffet line next to a principal, and to make small talk, I asked him, “So, what do you think about the session so far?” He looked me in the eye, then looked down at the food and said, “The desserts look pretty good.” 

I realized at that moment what I was up against. I’m used to resistance, but his response hit hard. I decided at that moment that I had to reach him. His superintendent was fully on board, but it was clear that we would succeed in this district only if the other 100 leaders were also believers.

At the end of a couple of days of intensive teaching, I took a risk and said to the principal, “The other day, when we met, you weren’t so sure this course was going to work for you. I’m curious, now that you’ve spent two days learning about your own emotional intelligence and how to implement the skills in your school, what do you think?”  He stood up, looked around the room at his colleagues, turned and looked at me, and, honest, he started to cry. He said, “I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Thank you for giving me the permission to feel.” 

Let’s begin there.

Marc Brackett, Ph.D., is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a Professor in the Child Study Center of Yale University. He’s also the author of  “Permission To Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-being and Success.”

To Build It Back Better, Embrace Interfaith Diversity

Posted on by NationSwell Team

For #BuildItBackBetter, NationSwell asked some of our nation’s most celebrated purpose-driven leaders how they’d build a society that is more equitable and resilient than the one we had before COVID-19. We have compiled and lightly edited their answers.

This article is part of the #BuildItBackBetter track “The Relational Era: Building a Culture of Connection, Bridging and Belonging” — presented in partnership with Einhorn Collaborative.

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning and every institution founded by a religious community in your city or town had disappeared. Consider what would be lost: The most obvious answer would be churches, synagogues and mosques. Sad for those who regularly attend congressional worship, surely, but what does it have to do with the rest of America? 

A lot, actually. The synagogue is a local site for food distribution to the hungry. The mosque organizes regular visits to the senior center. The church basement is where AA meetings are held every Wednesday night. Each of the faith groups hosts an after-school program that children of all identities attend — and those programs are lifesavers for working parents in your neighborhood. 

The faith groups consider these programs part of their commitment to God to help other human beings — and they’re just the beginning. Consider for a moment who started the hospitals in your city. In Chicago, where I live, some of the best include Northwestern, founded by Methodists; Loyola, founded by Jesuits; and Rush, founded by Presbyterians. All those hospitals are connected to world-class institutions of higher education. 

In his book “Bowling Alone,” Harvard University social scientist Robert Putnam estimates that more than 50% of American civic life — from our philanthropy and social services to health and education institutions — is somehow connected to religious communities. 

But the religious contributions to the nation go far beyond concrete efforts like health care and education. For centuries, our ideals for American democracy have been expressed in religious language. We have thought of ourselves as a city on a hill, a beloved community, a cathedral of humanity, a new Jerusalem, an almost chosen people. Each of these phrases is drawn from religion, generally what has come to be called the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But America is no longer a nation of Christians and Jews. There are approximately twice as many Muslims in the United States as there are Episcopalians, and nearly as many Muslims as Jews. We are all well aware that the United States is soon going to be a majority-minority nation. We should be equally aware that we are the most religiously diverse nation in human history. We should be asking ourselves the question: how do we welcome the contributions of the emerging religious minority communities in our midst? A diverse nation needs bridges between its different communities, and a bridge to a collective future where everybody can thrive.

Unfortunately, too little attention is paid to the religious dimensions of American diversity. In a recent study of higher education co-sponsored by my organization, Interfaith Youth Core, in partnership with research teams at The Ohio State University and North Carolina State University, we found that 70% of students reported that they felt it was important to bridge religious divides. And yet these same students also highlighted that, while they spent substantial time focused on race, nationality and sexuality, their colleges spent little time teaching them about issues of religious diversity.  

If the United States is to thrive as a religiously diverse democracy, we are going to need all Americans to increase our interfaith knowledge base and grow our interfaith skill sets. Higher education is an excellent place to start. IFYC has programs that help campuses create courses in Interfaith Studies and integrate interfaith leadership training into their student affairs programming. Religious communities can play their part by organizing interfaith congregational partnerships, and cities can host events like Days of Interfaith Service. In the COVID-19 era, a range of educational and civic organizations can make use of interfaith campaigns like We Are Each Other’s.

The United States is long past being a Judeo-Christian country. It is time for a group of interfaith and interfaith-fluent leaders to help usher us into a new chapter.

Eboo Patel is an author, speaker and interfaith leader. He is the founder of Interfaith Youth Core.

Insights on Building a Culture of Connection, Bridging and Belonging

Posted on by NationSwell Team

In partnership with Einhorn Collaborative, we held a conversation with four luminaries — David Brooks, Jenn Hoos Rothberg, john a. powell and Jacqueline Novogratz — on how we can commit to building a culture of connection, bridging and belonging in our relationships, in our organizations, our communities and across our country.

Here are some insights from that conversation.

  • People are distrustful because society and each other have not been trustworthy. Trust is the residue of experience. We’re struggling as a people because we have walls of distrust and animosity. The big difference this year is that we used to be able to pull together in a time of crisis as a social body. One unit that would behave as a one nation in times of crisis. We failed to do that this year, because we failed to form a social body.
  • What happens when you leave people alone distrusting, they do what they’re evolutionarily told to do. You revert to tribe, you develop scarcity mindset, you get hostility and you get othering.
  • We’re at one of those moments of moral convulsion where culture changes in a fundamental way. We are faced with the challenge of how to rebuild trust. To me, trust is built on both a personal level by open and virtuous, reliable trustworthy  behavior to one another, but also built in organizations. Trust is built by small organizations of people tackling common problems.
  • Toxic belonging is when my belonging is based on your not belonging, my belonging is based on othering you. This is the great challenge for America. We have this amazing vision of creating a society where all people are created equal in the midst of genocide and enslavement of people. There is a movement in two different directions one of expanding equality and a movement to holding on to slavery and toxic belonging. Both of these impulses are still here today.
  • What’s also happening in the United States and around the world is that we are reckoning with what freedom actually is, and that it can’t exist without constraint. Yet we are still having a conversation that is in America that is based on a rather naive definition that is self-serving and not other-serving.
  • There are many ways to think about freedom. If it’s just about you, you have unlimited freedom. If you understand that what you do affects others, you don’t have unlimited freedom. But we forget that we don’t live in a binary.
  • Even when we are in close proximity to each other, we create distance in our minds that still has an effect on our moral imagination. How do we transcend difference even when we are looking right up close to each other.
  • Every society implies an ideal person that needs to live in that society. In a hyper pluralistic society, where there is no dominant majority but radical diversity, social range and social courage is a key trait that encourages the ability to have a pluralistic identity and live a pluralistic life, and the ability to also see across differences and probably to code switch.

If you missed that conversation, you can watch it here.

#BuildItBackBetter: Antiracism and the Possibility of This Moment

Posted on by NationSwell Team

On July 22, NationSwell held a virtual conversation on antiracism with two leaders guiding our country towards a more just future — Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Founding Director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, and Carmen Rojas, PhD, President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation. Megan Ming Francis, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, moderated the discussion. In this conversation, our expert speakers discussed this critical inflection point in American society through the lenses of the individual and institutional change needed to build resilient, anti-racist systems in a post-COVID-19 world.

Here are some insights, practices and resources from their conversation.

Insights:

  • Antiracist work is an enduring project. We need to look at antiracist work as the continual work of individuals and institutions, and we need to look at the way these institutions have been able to normalize violence against BIPOC.
  • Antiracism means we are eliminating “not racist” from the American vocabulary — instead, institutions and people are either racist or anti-racist.
  • There needs to be less of a focus on how organizations are self-declaring that they are “antiracist” and instead focus on how you are embodying anti-racist practices, policies, behaviors and ideas.
  • Racist research asks, “what is wrong with people?” when instead we should look at everything that is wrong with the policies and power that is in place.
  • Philanthropy is intended to be audacious and help society re-envision a new way of operating, not be pragmatic. However, philanthropy has lacked courage and focused on incremental reform. Abolition is an innovation from the ground, but it’s not being funded despite the number of funders supporting criminal justice reform.

Practices:

  • There are policies already on the table that can eliminate police violence, change the racial wealth gap and eliminate poverty. The way we do this is through supporting initiatives to eliminate and defund the police, endorse reparations, and provide basic income to those experiencing poverty.
  • As an individual, don’t just read and have conversations, there are many active steps you can begin to take: Look at what organizations you can support or join. Vote. Organize in your community. Run for office.
  • As leaders, we need to ask ourselves, “who suffers by our slowness?” Who doesn’t get to live one day free because of our slowness? Reflect on these questions and then take action within your organization. Support policies that are equitable, that recognize people as individuals.
  • Wherever you can, make room for Black and BIPOC leaders to be resourced enough to make change possible. Acknowledge that your power as a leader may look like redistributing power and resources.
  • Ask yourself in two weeks from now: what have I done to shift power?

Resources:

To watch the digital conversation in its entirety, visit our Facebook page.

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#BuilditBackBetter is an ongoing initiative that will invite the NationSwell community to come together to surface the solutions and ideas that can help us to emerge from this period of crisis with a more equitable, inclusive, resilient society and planet. Learn more about it here.