Editor’s note: President Rip Rapson has written daily updates to staff through the COVID-19 pandemic. This collection of updates from May and June 2020 centered on George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. 

For many of us, these past weeks and months have been the most trying times of our lives. With the Kresge staff working remotely from our scattered homes, I’ve been writing daily messages to help bind us together, to keep us hopeful, to help keep us focused on the North Star of our work to expand opportunity in the nation’s cities.

Many days, I reach for a note of humor, to hopefully bring a few smiles, lift a few spirits and evoke the camaraderie of shared laughter in a shared space.

But lately, there has been little room for humor. And as a native of Minneapolis before coming to Kresge and Detroit nearly 15 years ago, my heart is torn even more than it would be otherwise. I’d like to share with you what I’ve shared with our staff about the need for people of good will to take a stand for the right things, right now.

I hope that the honoring of the events of 150 years ago celebrated by Juneteenth has worked its way into your day.  It is a day intended for celebration, to be sure. But it is also a day of remembrance, an almost sacred touchstone for Blacks – particularly those from Texas and the South generally. And it is, in this extraordinary moment in our country’s history, a reminder that impatience must be paired with patience . . . outrage with hope . . . symbolic expression with tangible progress . . . tolerance with ethical lucidity.

I’ve previously sent along some readings that frame the challenges, and opportunities, we face in pursuit of racial equity and justice. I wanted to offer three more.

The first is an extraordinarily comprehensive resource page compiled by john powell and his colleagues at the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley: Our Uprising 2020 resource page.

The second is a CBS news story that captures some of the parallels between the movement to remove symbols of colonialism, white supremacy, and oppression in South Africa and the analogous movement to take down Confederate statues in the United States. It is interesting to note that the reporter is standing in front of the Constitutional Court, just across the square from the Constitutional Museum, for which Kresge provided a lead gift.

And the third is a powerful rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” by Rochelle Rice, coupled with moving historical – and contemporary – video of the civil rights movement.  The link is to the National Museum of African American History & Culture’s Juneteenth web-page, rich with information about Juneteenth.

Rip

I hope we will all use our day away from work tomorrow – in honor and celebration of Juneteenth – to reflect on the meaning of the day, particularly in this momentous period of American history.

In that spirit, I wanted to underscore a handful of points of optimism – and some evidence that we may yet be able to emerge from this tunnel of darkness to a world of more profound kindness, equity, and justice.

(Photo: Rhododendrites, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

First, as you’ve likely heard, the Supreme Court ruled “in favor” of the “Dreamers.”

In a 5-4 opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court ruled that the Trump administration cannot carry out its plan to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed nearly 700,000 young people to avoid deportation and remain in the country. It concluded that the administration had failed to provide adequate justification for ending the program.

The Opportunity Fund team, which has worked diligently to promote immigrant rights, penned an official response from the Foundation.

Second, murals – always a powerful form of expression during times of complexity and pain – have proliferated in the wake of the protests that began in Minneapolis.

In Washington D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered her own mural – renaming and repainting, 16^th Street just north of the White House with the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ in large yellow letters.

Flint did the same thing, with the Flint Public Art Project painting “Black Lives Matter” in large white letters on a long block of Martin Luther King Avenue leading into downtown.

In Detroit, City Hall sponsored a contest in which students were invited to come up with a mural suited to the city’s population and history. A panel of students selected the winner from 35 submissions, and then invited other students to paint it onto Woodward Avenue. The winning entry was a white-and-black message that read “Power to the People,” with the “o” in Power represented by a raised fist.

Third, Michigan is not Texas – or Florida or Arkansas.

It was announced yesterday that Michigan is one of three states whose data are deemed by experts to suggest that we are “on track to contain COVID.” The leading indicator is the infection rate – which is .85 (meaning each infected person infects .85 other people – what constitutes an .85 person is not entirely clear to me, but the number is encouraging). Earlier this spring, Michigan was the third-most affected state, but has – with huge credit to Governor Whitmer – remained disciplined, with some of the most conservative health protections in the country.

And fourth, Harvard asked ten of its faculty to recommend writers and literary works that “promote context and understanding about systemic racism, white privilege, and the long legacies of slavery and white supremacy in American history.” Reading List on Race

The list spans E.B. Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903) (recommended by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) to Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (2019) (recommended by Tomiko Brown-Nagin) . . . Toni Morrison’s The Origin of Others (2017) (recommended by Michelle Williams) to Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016) (recommended by Jennifer Hochschild) . . . and six other fascinating selections. Each faculty member’s commentary on their selection is, itself, worth the read. A good way to spend part of Juneteenth.

Rip

Greetings everyone:

Highly mixed news regarding sexual orientation and transgender status.

Photo: Alec Perkins (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

First, the good news. The United States Supreme Court today decided on a 6-3 vote that it is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for an employer to fire a worker merely for being gay or transgender. The decision said Title VII, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate because of a person’s sex, also covers sexual orientation and transgender status. In something of a surprise, the decision was written by President Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch, who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four more liberal members to form a majority.

Second, the dispiriting, but not entirely unexpected, bad news. During the same week that the nation honored the memory of the 49 victims of the Pulse massacre in Orlando, the Trump administration finalized a rule that that health care and health insurance may discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The rule is set to go into effect by mid-August. If I were William Barr, I would start worrying about exactly when the Supreme Court will invalidate the rule – the Court doesn’t seem enamored of the “logic” that “sex discrimination” applies only when someone faces discrimination for being female or male.

Third, as if to amplify the second development, the really really bad news: two African-American transgender women were viciously attacked on the same date last week. On June 9^th, Riah Milton was killed in Liberty Township, Ohio, and Dominque Rem’mie Fells was killed in Philadelphia. Their deaths are at least the 14^th and 15^th violent deaths of a transgender or gender non-conforming person this year in the United States.

And fourth, as Black Lives Matter protests continue around the country, huge crowds gathered in New York City to elevate the risks facing the Black transgender community.

Just a reminder – that none of us needed – that there are many fronts to this fight.

Rip

The New York Times columnist Michelle Alexander recently wrote:

In part, we find ourselves here for the same reasons a civil war tore our nation apart more than 100 years ago: Too many citizens prefer to cling to brutal and unjust systems than to give up political power, the perceived benefits of white supremacy and an exploitative economic system. If we do not learn the lessons of history and choose a radically different path forward, we may lose our last chance at creating a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy.

I share Ms. Alexander’s concern that we risk not taking full advantage of the moment. We have in recent memory seen powerful extended periods of social outrage – whether protesting economic injustice, police brutality, or gun violence. Our current moment feels fundamentally different – falling somewhere between the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that carried an unfocused policy agenda centered in corporate overreach and the highly-focused protests against the unimaginably horrific gun violence that accompanied successive mass shootings at Parkland, Sandy Hook, Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Tree of Life Synagogue, the Pulse Nightclub, the El Paso Walmart, and the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Hotel.

Ms. Alexander’s call is to fully elevate, digest, and redirect into action what history teaches about the pervasive intransigence of racism. That is, unequivocally, the potential power of the moment. That there are steps already in motion to curtail police bias and excessive force suggests the magnitude of that power.

Somehow though, as hard it will be, we need to face head-on just how difficult it is to sustain the energies of protest – and even the higher-level difficulties of pivoting these energies into channels of enduring change.

On one hand, the protests precipitated by George Floyd’s murder can justifiably – and against all odds – already claim success. 

• There is every evidence that there will be immediate and meaningful action at the local, state, and federal levels to curb the militarization of police departments and to usher meaningful reform in broader law enforcement practices and policies . . .
• There are powerful indications that successive waves of Black Lives Matter protests have rolled up into something more impactful and enduring than any single one of those waves was able to accomplish . . .
• There is reason to believe that we have been preparing for a good long time a civil rights policy agenda ready and able to be activated . . .
• There are signals that broad swaths of society are prepared for some of the tough, uncompromising conversations we need to have about racial reconciliation in its most authentic forms.

These are goals that have been unforgivably resistant to change. The murder of one Black man – compounding and illuminating countless other indistinguishable acts of heinous lethal police violence – has catalyzed in a relative nano-second a new reality. Americans have embraced the imperative that the status quo must change.

On the other hand, however, there is reason to be concerned that the protests may extend only so far.

They should reach further. The underlying drivers of racial injustice remain just as virulent as they were before COVID and before Mr. Floyd’s death. And they are animated by a dynamic that would suggest they could reach further. So much of the inherent potency of the protests is that they are – by virtue of their organic, intergenerational, and multi-racial structure – built to tap an abiding, pent-up, and uniquely animating passion for racial justice.

The moment of revulsion about racist behavior is real, as the banning of Confederate symbols at NASCAR races reveals. The opportunity for continuing mobilization is real. The possibility of re-connecting our young people to a sense of agency over their future is real.

I would accordingly hope for the magnificent energies of protest that they/we find a way to avoid the kind of diffusing centrifugal tendencies that have diluted the energy and power of so many recent protest movements . . . That they place other expressions of inequity and injustice firmly in their sights . . . That they tie-back to specific actionable avenues of change.

So, we need – in ways I’m not smart enough to imagine – a tsunami of sustained protest and pressure politics that comes to ground on the kinds of issues on which Kresge focuses. Racial disparities that infect virtually all social determinants of health. Racially disparate effects of a changing climate. De-valuation of racial and ethnic community identity and culture. Insidiously-designed racial barriers to asset building, economic mobility, and intergenerational opportunity. Chasms among races in educational attainment, from pre-school, to K-12, to higher education. Blockages of capital flows into communities of color.

A tall order – probably too tall. But anything less risks disillusionment . . .  regression into stale orthodoxies of why we can’t do this or that . . . reversion to accepting the unacceptable.

We can’t take everything on at once.  But maybe we could start with something tangible and immediate. Voter registration and anti-voter-suppression might be a place to continue the work. If every protest from here on out produced thousands of registered voters, we might lay indispensable foundation for even more expansive change. We can build from there.

Rip

Greetings everyone:

On the heels of last night’s note celebrating the next generation of leadership in civil rights, politics, and social reform, I was reminded that some among the Kresge family can actually claim credit for contributing to that generation. Specifically, as mothers and fathers of young adults stepping into the responsibilities of social change.

So here are two examples – from our Trustees – of parents who have clearly done something right: Maria Otero and Paula Pretlow.

Maria shared with me the poster that her son, David – an artist – created for last Saturday’s march on the White House.

Paula took to Facebook to describe how her son, Neil, transformed a one-man protest on a corner in Orinda – one of California’s wealthiest, and whitest, suburbs –  into an all-community-movement. Here is a slightly condensed version of her post:

This past Tuesday, my son Neil took a mid-afternoon break from his computer and work to make a sign, reading:

He took that sign to the busiest intersection in Orinda, the same East Bay suburb where he lives, where I raised his sister, Alison, and him, and where Blacks make up less than 1% of the population.  For 15 minutes, he was a one-man protest, with his wife Tanya taking photos, and baby Miles looking on from his seat in his stroller. She then posted pictures of Neil on the corner, together with a brief caption, to the neighborhood blog and on social media.

Within hours, people were flooding the blog, asking what they could do and applauding Neil and Tanya for bringing the issue of racism and police harassment in Orinda to light. Tanya suggested that interested families get together and talk. By the time 30 folks responded, Tanya started coordinating with the local police, just in case. Thirty grew to 100, grew to 300, grew to 400 as of [Saturday], and on Sunday, June 6th, over 1,000 people showed up to march from the corner Neil stood on just four days earlier to the local public library about ¼ mile away. Tanya not only organized the route, but also arranged for the  volunteers to meet and greet the crowd and to keep them on the sidewalks for safety.

When the crowd reached the library square, Neil, my introverted son, kicked off spontaneous speeches with a speech of his own. A fourth-grader stood at the front of the square and spoke! So too other young people and young parents. People from the surrounding suburbs. And a young woman from South Africa, who said, “America, the world is watching you.” Each one shared a message of hope. It was multi-cultural, multi-racial, gender-inclusive, and inter-generational.

All I wanted Neil to do was to visit the local police and introduce himself so he might stop being profiled and harassed. Instead, he and Tanya started a local movement!

The local paper is going to name him a “local hero.” The city council wants to bring him and Tanya in to meet with them. One person wrote that they cried at his speech and were awed by his hope. Another wrote on the neighborhood blog, “Neil should lead us and we will follow.”

Today, I watched my son and his wife “show up” and become leaders in their community. I am so proud (note Paula’s cameo on the right).

Great parents. Great next generation.

Rip

“We need people to vote, we need people to engage in policy reform and political reform, we need people to not tolerate the rhetoric of fear and anger that so many of our elected officials use to sustain power. We need the cultural environments in the workplace to shift.” – Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative

The protests that have accompanied the mourning of George Floyd’s murder have raised the promise of a generational change to the public’s willingness to seriously change policing behavior in our country. I suspect that we all align with that aspiration – the hope and commitment that we can substitute for brutal individual suppression techniques and militarized crowd control tactics policies, practices, and behaviors that enhance the community orientation of law enforcement departments and elevate techniques of de-escalation and peaceful resolution in situations of non-violent confrontation.

City Halls and police departments across the country are signaling that these kinds of reform are within reach, thanks to the power of constructive, peaceful protest. Some observers have suggested that it required fires and looting to get mainstream America to pay attention to these issues, but I think that mis-diagnoses the situation. It has been the peaceful marches, the potent organizing, the personalization of policy that has made the real difference.

Although the demonstrations have been fueled by all generations, ages, races, and backgrounds, the next generation of organizers of color – particularly African American organizers – has risen to the call with particular visibility and effectiveness. Whereas my evening note on Friday looked to President Obama, the president of an airline, Ai-jen Poo, and Neil deGrasse Tyson as exemplars of a previous generation’s leadership, the leadership we are witnessing on the streets of America is – while similar in its convictions and skill – entirely different in its orientation to systematic change. And it is an orientation that is unlikely to dissipate.

First, it is a leadership that doesn’t accept the we’ve-tried-that-and-it-doesn’t-work orientation to change. For these leaders, there is no moral justification for delay, for half-steps, or for equivocation. Like Bernie Sanders, this is a leadership for whom moderate aspirations simply legitimate and perpetuate systems that consistently fail those society has pushed to the margins.

Second, it is a leadership that has been forged in the crucible of economic crisis and social dislocation. The Great Recession. The disruptive uncertainties of globalism. The disillusionment with the polarization, authoritarianism, and paralysis of federal politics. The hollowness of the idealistic intentions of social media. The utter failure to address a changing climate. And on and on. The net result has been a profound skepticism about the underpinnings of the world order this new generation has been handed and a deep stake they have in changing it on their watch.

Third it is a leadership defined by racial justice. The George Floyd tragedy has unequivocally driven home for these leaders that change cannot be accomplished without an accounting and a remediation of the deeply encoded racism that permeates and infects every aspect of 21st century life. Full stop.

Fourth, it is a leadership that understands the potency of collective voice, while recognizing the centrality of individual agency. Change attends people well-organized where they live, but the selflessly heroic acts of individuals can crystalize the moment – whether leshia Evans facing down a line of riot police in Baton Rouge or 16-year-old Stefan Perez raising his hand to stop 1,000 protesters on Michigan Avenue who were poised for conflict with a Detroit police contingent.

And fifth, it is a leadership that is not afraid of mounting the front steps of City Hall. My evening note on Tuesday underscored the tens of young African-American mayors who are running major American cities. Many of them are in the 30’s. Many came up through community organizing. Most are building a public agenda grounded in inclusive opportunity and racial justice. The new leadership is not content to push in from the edges of power – it insists on being the power.

There are countless other dimensions to this next generation of leadership, but these qualities make clear just how rich this moment can be as it is extended, expanded, and actualized.

And yet the challenge will be exactly that. Extend it over time so that the change process has time to gestate. Expand it to include genuine allyship – on the part of all sectors of society. Actualize it into concrete change – into policies that begin to dismantle the abuses of law enforcement and create not only new systems of public safety, but also reimagined versions of so many other systems that carry the vestiges of disparate racial impact.

Kresge is supporting this leadership in each and every one of its programs. But we are called to do even more.

Rip

Leadership. We’ve seen what it’s not.

A memorial was made outside of Cup Foods, where George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis Minnestoa, as people protested against police violence on May 26, 2020. (Photo: Lorie Shaull)

Mendacity, manipulation . . . incompetence, intolerance . . .  divisiveness, dishonesty (this list of adjectives actually goes on for thirteen pages, but it has been edited here in the spirit of brevity).

All the more important to be reminded of what it can be.

In the political realm, President Obama in a recent blog posted entitled, “How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change,” notes three lessons we should apply to the events of the last week:

• First, the waves of protests across the country represent a genuine and legitimate frustration over a decades-long failure to reform police practices and the broader criminal justice system in the United States.
• Second, if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn’t between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform.
• Third, the more specific we can make demands for criminal justice and police reform, the harder it will be for elected officials to just offer lip service to the cause and then fall back into business as usual once protests have gone away.

►  Being a student of history, thinking with clarity and discipline, and being grounded in ethical integrity.

In the corporate realm, the president of American Airlines, Doug Parker, was flying on Southwest Airlines reading White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. The flight attendant, Jacque Rae, didn’t know who he was, but was interested in the book, so sat next to him and began a conversation, which lasted the length of the flight.

Parker subsequently wrote Rae a note of thanks. And in a second note, to her mother, he wrote: “Your daughter’s visit was a gift to me. She had the courage to approach me only because I was reading a book on racism in America. She, like most of us, is questioning how we got to this spot and why we can’t be better. I had no answers other than to tell her we all need to talk about it more. Reading a book is one thing – spending time with a kind, strong, young black woman who is hurting and trying to learn from others is another thing altogether.”

► Humility, a willingness to learn from others with lived experience, openness and vulnerability. 

In the realm of civil society leaders, Ai-jen Poo the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, recently wrote: “Who Cares? Now All of Us Must” for the New York Times Book Review. Ai-jen notes:

• The strength of the domestic workers I meet gives me hope that the widespread recognition of the importance of domestic and care workers will translate to fair compensation and protection. We know that those who care for us are going to be the ones we increasingly need—and whom we need to protect and value.
• Domestic workers  are organizing, coming together to win legislative change to improve working conditions. On May 1, the Philadelphia Domestic Workers Bill of Rights came into effect, protecting the 16,000 nannies, house cleaners, and home care workers in Philadelphia with clear contracts, required breaks, fair notice of termination, and a provision for a portable benefits system that will be implemented at the end of the year.

► Passion, vision, trust in the power of organizing in common purpose.

And in the realm of the academy, Neil deGrasse Tyson, arguably the world pre-eminent astrophysicist, discusses in a three-minute video the struggles he encountered as teachers, career counselors, and others dismissed his aspirations to be a scientist.

► Strength of character, unwavering sense of purpose, deep self-awareness. 

With the description of the mayors I sent along in last night’s note, these leaders symbolize the qualities we need to see through to the other side. Leaders whose qualities are commensurate with the magnitude of the challenges we face.

Rip

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

–Desmond Tutu.

Good morning everyone:

There is no nuance, no gray-area, no let’s-wait-and-see at play in Minneapolis:

When a horrific film shows a black man fully restrained and being murdered by police officers, but is not deemed sufficient cause for the Hennepin County Attorney to charge and arrest the offenders …

When live television coverage of the scene in South Minneapolis shows a CNN reporter of color presenting press credentials to Minnesota State Police, expressing a willingness to cooperate fully, and lawfully exercising his First Amendment rights and yet, that action is deemed sufficient basis for an arrest on the spot …

When the story of pain, and furor and fatigue being felt by people of color going about their daily lives is somehow papered over by the narrative of a city whose black and brown residents are bent on destruction, looting and fire-bombing people’s property – a narrative fueled by the President of the United States calling out the “thugs” in Minneapolis …

When the best attempt that our president can make to calm the situation is to tweet: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” …

When the police culture not just in Minneapolis, but all throughout our nation, year-after-year, incident-after-incident, takes two steps forward with DEI trainings, inclusive hiring practices and community outreach, but then, inexplicably, suddenly, jumps four steps back with acts of brutality, abuse and disregard of civil liberties …

When a city celebrated for its long history of progressive, principled, moral and effective leadership through the administrations of Don Fraser, Sharon Sayles Belton and R.T. Rybak is forced to fall into the abyss before it can fully summon the will to act decisively, to move to higher ground, and to root out the most invidious manifestations of racism that still poison a great city’s soil …

No, there is no ambiguity.

My great friend R.T. Rybak, the mayor of Minneapolis from 2002-2014 and now president of the Minneapolis Foundation, wrote an excruciatingly powerful commentary about what is happening in our beloved city, and I am sharing part of it here with permission:

Sleepless and mortified, my heart melts in real-time as parts of the city I love so deeply burn away. Knowing these neighborhoods as I do I see way too clearly what is going up in smoke. While the TV showed things on fire, I saw flames getting closer to the first-generation entrepreneur who so proudly showed me the new business where he invested everything he had, the neighborhood kids who cheered so loudly at the opening of that library, and the seniors in that wonderful care facility where they must be trapped because of COVID.

It is nearly impossible to get these horrifying images out of our heads, but we must, because right now our eyes have to stay focused on one single image:

A human being, staring calmly off into the middle distance, while his knee suffocates another human being. Our repulsion should boil over as we see this is a white police officer, who took an oath to protect and serve that person on the ground, who is a black man, who we know would not be treated like that if he was white. We should be shocked again when we see other officers doing nothing to prevent a death.

And nothing should shock us more than the fact that we are no longer shocked, because this image is so familiar.

Until every one of us can see that image for what it is we cannot move another inch forward. Our country, and our beloved imperfect city, has tolerated two tiers of justice too long when we never should have tolerated it in the first place. We need to acknowledge that on some level, every one of us had a role in keeping this inequity in place.

I’ll go first, because after 12 years as mayor of this city, I should. My own efforts to change a police department and its culture failed badly. That will haunt me for the rest of my life, and it should. As each of us sees and acknowledges our own part it can be paralyzing. It was for me. But I was touched deeply yesterday by my colleague at the Minneapolis Foundation, Chanda Smith Baker. Having grown up and now raising a family as an African American in north Minneapolis, and leading Pillsbury United Communities for years, she has seen so many more of the consequences of our deep, endemic racism than I ever will. But as we surveyed the damage and pain in our community she said simply, and clearly: “We have no choice but to act.”

R.T. is so right.

We at Kresge have to act. Within our own organization, it is imperative that we create safe, healing spaces – spaces that permit us to bear witness, to listen and support one another, to chart a course of kindness, respect and inclusion within our own organizational culture. Moreover, every grant we make, every energy we dedicate, has to take direct aim at deconstructing the racial inequities that continue to impede opportunity, equity and justice.

We will not waiver from that charge.

Thank you,

Rip

Good afternoon everyone:

Seeing images of streets I spent time in – even the Third Precinct Station where I held community meetings for a year … hearing community voices that even 15 years later are familiar – so many of the leaders of Minneapolis civil rights organizations have dedicated their careers to equity and justice … and watching a police department struggle yet another time with cultural undercurrents of authoritarianism and racism – which are far too reminiscent of the police “reform” efforts I was tasked to lead when in the Mayor’s office … all make it hard to move on this evening.

Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press wrote a moving article about COVID-19 in yesterday’s paper, asking those who would politicize mask-wearing, hair-salon-opening, and death-tallying to step back, take a breath, and think about the welfare of people other than ourselves. He wrote: “Caring about your fellow citizens means empathizing even when you haven’t walked in their shoes. Otherwise, no rich would ever help the poor. No majority would help a minority. No healthy would ever help the sick.”

It is a bit of a stretch, but I was struck by how these words apply to the realities illuminated by George Floyd’s death as well. What would it mean for white America to have empathy, real empathy, for our fellow citizens of color? Minneapolis Mayor Frey expressed the negative side of the proposition when he observed last night that this simply would not have happened to a white man – not under those circumstances.

But the positive side is, in some ways, more complex. How can white Americans even begin to know what it would feel like if every piece of our lives involved a risk? Those of us who are white can’t know what that feels like, but we must empathize … somehow.

One of our communications staffers, Kaniqua Welch, sent me a social media thread that drove this home:

Black people are so tired.
We can’t go jogging (#AmaudArbery).
We can’t relax in the comfort of our own homes (#BothemSean and #AtatianaJefferson).
We can’t ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride).
We can’t have a cellphone (#StephonClark).
We can’t leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards).
We can’t play loud music (#JordanDavis).
We can’t sell CD’s (#AltonSterling).
We can’t sleep (#AiyanaJones)
We can’t walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown).
We can’t play cops and robbers (#TamirRice).
We can’t go to church (#Charleston9).
We can’t walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin).
We can’t hold a hair brush while leaving our own bachelor party (#SeanBell).
We can’t party on New Years (#OscarGrant).
We can’t get a normal traffic ticket (#SandraBland).
We can’t lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile).
We can’t break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones).
We can’t shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford) .
We can’t have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher).
We can’t read a book in our own car (#KeithScott).
We can’t be a 10-year old walking with our grandfather (#CliffordGlover).
We can’t decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese).
We can’t ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans).
We can’t cash our check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood).
We can’t take out our wallet (#AmadouDiallo).
We can’t run (#WalterScott).
We can’t breathe (#EricGarner).
We can’t live (#FreddieGray).
We’re tired.
Tired of making hashtags.
Tired of trying to convince you that our #BlackLivesMatter too.
Tired of dying.
Tired.
Tired.
Tired.
So very tired.

Rip

Good afternoon everyone:

It is impossible to comprehend the tragic march of COVID-19 across our country without explicitly confronting the crystalline and disturbing manifestations of racial disparity and injustice that have followed in its wake: Epicenters of suffering tied to disinvested neighborhoods of color … unconscionably, disproportionate deaths in the African American and LatinX communities … under-provisioned testing services in our poorest nonwhite communities… the financial collapse of small businesses owned by people of color… and the list goes on and on.

Tuesday’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis wasn’t a consequence of the virus. But it was a consequence of the unremitting, insidious cancer of racism that lurks immediately below the surface of daily life. Whether expressed through eruptions of authoritarian abuse from municipal police departments, or through COVID’s exacerbation and amplification of health and economic inequities, racism remains a corrosive, intolerable undercurrent in American society.

The excessive lethal force that turned on George Floyd – and on Ahmaud Arbery while he jogged in a Georgia subdivision … and on Atatiana Jefferson as she slept in her own bed in Fort Worth … and on and on – is incomprehensible and outrageous. It violates every norm of human decency. We must stand as one nation in demanding justice for all these victims.

I found myself turning last night to two Kresge Eminent Artist poets to help find voice for my outrage and sadness – to perhaps replenish my dwindling reservoir of hope.

Naomi Long Madgett, our 2012 recipient, published her first book of poetry at age 17 and established Lotus Press in Detroit in 1972, making it possible for other African American poets to publish and distribute their work.

Her poem “Midway” was written 50 years ago – it resonates with equal power today:

I’ve come this far to freedom and I won’t turn back.
I’m climbing to the highway from my old dirt track.
            I’m coming and I’m going
           And I’m stretching and I’m growing
And I’ll reap what I’ve been sowing or my skin’s not black.

I’ve prayed and slaved and waited and I’ve sung my song.
You’ve bled me and you’ve starved me but I’ve still grown strong.
            You’ve lashed me and you’ve treed me
            And you’ve everything but freed me
But in time you’ll know you need me and it won’t be long.

I’ve seen the daylight breaking high above the bough.
I’ve found my destination and I’ve made my vow;
             So whether you abhor me
             Or deride me or ignore me

Mighty mountains loom before me and I won’t stop now.

Gloria House, our 2019 recipient, has been a poet, human and civil rights activist, organizer and educator for 50 years.

Here are a few of the stanzas of her 2017 work “We Will Stand”:

Ruthlessly removed from the lands of their birth,
Brought here against their will,
our ancestors chose to survive—
though the days they endured were deadly.
Through centuries of degradation,
they kept choosing to root themselves in the soil of a legacy
that could not be wrenched from them,
a memory of how to stand
in the earth of humanity, to hold their footing
in the ground of Love that sustains everything.

They lifted their voices with tenacity and determination:
We shall not
We shall not
We shall not be moved!
We shall not
We shall not be moved!
Like a tree planted by the water
We shall not be moved!

We have chanted those words in our spirits over generations,
longing for freedom,
for a place where we could feel the earth’s throbbing beneath our feet,
and release the bone-deep trepidations
buried in us by centuries of terror.
We sang against lynchings by Klansmen,
Southern sheriffs and other “guardians” of society.
Moving North, we believed, ballot in hand,
we could join the ranks of the free.
We sang.

We must sing our song again
and summon the will to stand
like those proud 19th Century African men and women in Detroit,
who, in the face of relentless intimidation,
built churches and schools and mutual aid societies,
and harbored those running to Canada for freedom;
like the sweet doctor, Ossian, who said I will defend my home
from organized violence;
like our grandfathers and fathers, who fought for dignity in the plants,
and the right to unionize to protect the value of their labor;
like all the freedom fighters who made the way for us in this city,
we must stand.

We must keep on choosing to root ourselves in the soil of that legacy
that cannot be ripped out of us, a memory
of how to stand in the earth of our humanity,
to hold our footing in the ground of Love that sustains everything,
and stand like a tree planted by the water,
like Detroiters of old,
like the people of a city planted by the water.
We shall not be moved.
We will stand.
We will stand.
We will stand.

The monographs of the lives and work of these two extraordinary artists are on our website. I encourage you to spend time there – their work is affirming, inspiring and sobering at a time we need all of that so desperately.

Rip