Centering Lived Experience: A Call to Action for Memphis Advocates
On March 25th, several of my colleagues from across the nonprofit sector here in Memphis gathered for the Vanderhaar Symposium at Christian Brothers University Racial and Economic Equity Virtual Summit. We had the pleasure of hearing from truth-tellers and racial equity pioneers, PolicyLink Founder Angela Glover Blackwell and President/CEO Michael McAfee.
If you were unable to attend, I urge you to watch the summit; it was a powerful and worthwhile discussion.
Still, there’s something I’d like to add — something I’d like us all to bear in mind as we view or replay this session and take part in other discussions to come: System change cannot take place without guidance from — and respectful partnership with — the people who are too often targeted by systemic inequities. Lived or living experience must fuel and steer any policies claiming to transform institutions and structures. That’s because these are the systems designed to (either through apathy or plain antipathy to racial and economic equity) continue to perpetuate poverty, mass incarceration, voter suppression/oppression, suppressed wages, inaccessible and low-quality healthcare, immobility, poor and unaffordable housing, substandard education, and inadequate access to capital necessary to buy homes, build businesses and move Black and Brown people from survival toward building generational wealth.
As we think about the next steps, I ask you to consider what you heard in the racial and economic equity summit about the work going on here in Memphis. I especially hope you’ll consider ways you can help as we align efforts to transform and ultimately abolish the various inequitable systems, institutions, and structures at work.
We’re ready for new partnerships and energy around transforming our city’s approach to health; transportation; education; housing; social services; public and private finance; elections; and criminal justice reform.
We must move from operating within racially and economically inequitable structures and systems to instead addressing their root causes. We must move away from deploying situational poverty solutions to addressing generational poverty problems.
These systems are all interlocked and contribute to the inequities and injustice we see every day. But the good news is that our work in these systems, through transformation, can play a pivotal role in eliminating those same inequities and injustices. Here are some questions we can ask ourselves along the way:
Determine your role in transforming racist and inequitable systems, institutions, and/or structures.
What is your purpose? What do you do to effectuate that purpose? And do you do it well?
Determine what system(s), institutions, and/or structures are or can be impacted by your work in that role
Find who’s doing that work as a coalition
Join it!
And if you see that work is not being done, but is necessary:
Create a coalition
Build a base
Align those coalitions across systems to strategize, engage, mobilize, and transform!
I happened to hear abolitionist Dr. Bettina Love speak just before the Vanderhaar summit. Her words and work resonated with me and clarified my hope for the ultimate transformation of the racial and economic inequities here in Memphis.
I think she put it best — or at least better than I could:
In this moment, at this time, we need co-conspirators/accomplices in this work, not simply allies. Co-conspirators are equally complicit in the process of doing something; an act; which means putting something on the line. My justice, the justice of those who look like me, cannot be predicated on whether you learn. We have the data; we have the language; now we have to do.
Find your role. Align with existing efforts or coalitions -- or, if none exist, create them. Strategize. Engage. Mobilize. Transform.
We have incredible work ahead.