by Mame Keita, Facilitator-Coordinator
These past two years have been very telling. The pandemic has exacerbated thus revealed entrenched issues within our society. From health to housing, to education and police brutality to just cite a few, the problems are glaring, acute, and widespread.
These inequities demand our immediate collective attention and effort. The time to embrace the challenge of working towards equity is now, when our minds are still fresh, our hearts still bleeding and our anger is still burning strong enough to demand change from our institutions.
Our institutions, from public to private, large to small, national or local, confronted with our communal outrage, promised us change. Many of them created compelling equity statements and declared publicly their commitment to equity, but that is not enough. The right, consistent and widely different actions are what will make those ideals a reality. Our community also needs to hold the institutions accountable to those promises if we want to see their realization.
The work required is not easy and faced with challenging realities, attitudes can be those of the status quo, or worse, of regress. The justifications can be endless, lack of time, lack of money, unclear path, or just too much trouble until the next crisis. If we fail to work tirelessly to make the changes required, we will soon find ourselves facing the same problem over and over again and wondering why.
The road towards equity is that less traveled road. I hope it’s the one we will take and remain on for as long as it takes to make our journey to equity.
