Dear Share Our Strength and Community
Wealth Partners colleagues:
When I went to Charlottesville for Share Our Strength at the end of April,
having lunch outdoors on the pedestrian mall dotted with bookstores,
restaurants and shops, I couldn’t help but think how civilized and gentle a
community it was. It will be again someday soon but in the near term our memory
of it will be marred by the ugliness we witnessed Saturday.
Our work at
Share Our Strength focuses on ensuring that kids grow up healthy, strong and
ready and able to contribute to society. Implicit in that is that the
society they will be joining is worth getting them ready for in the first
place. When racism, bigotry, hate and discrimination encroach on that society,
the focus of our efforts must expand to address it. Otherwise, really, what’s
the point?
It doesn’t erode
our commitment to nonpartisanship and bipartisanship to assert that the
President’s failure to condemn racism for what it is, is a deeply disappointing
affront to every American who loves our country and the values it represents.
Thankfully many Republican and Democratic leaders were united yesterday in
their explicit denunciation of the white supremacists who converged on
Charlottesville and who in no way represent the good people who live there.
In circumstances
like these, the question is always “what can I do?” My friend Jonathan
Greenblatt, who led the Social Innovation Fund in the Obama White House and is
now CEO of the Anti-Defamation League has made a number of suggestions over the
past 24 hours about what government officials should do, but has also written:
“We should not wait for government: businesses and nonprofits, CEO’s, clergy
and citizens. It’s up to all of us to take a stand against hate. You can
tweet, march, donate, mobilize, vote. Action can take many forms,. It isn’t bounded
by politics. Only limit is your creativity. Ultimately this is not about
political resistance. It’s about moral renewal and recommitting to the American
idea.” You can follow him at @JGreenblattADL
My only advice
for now: don’t be silent.
Billy
Yes, Billy. I'm with you.
ReplyDeleteOf Jonathan Greenblatt's suggestions, our most fundamental and essential obligation is to vote. Yes, tweet, march, donate, mobilize, but we will be smeared with the shame of what happened in Charlottesville if we don't vote. Louise Farmer Smith louisefarmersmith.com.