I recently met Caroline Hill, a force of nature and beautiful soul in the past week. And she posed the following question:
How do we restart and reopen our communities in the middle of two pandemics - the acute one that infests our physical body and the chronic one that has ravaged our spiritual and physical body for generations?
This question floored me. She is so right. We have spent months reeling and trying to rebuild our worldwide community from the global crisis of COVID-19. And now the United States and some parts of the world are stepping up and taking action against the systemic racism that has plagued our country for centuries. How do we restart, reopen, and rebuild? Caroline Hill wrote about it here.
Lady Box is an Indigenous Person of Color Woman-Owned Business. And while my ethnicity and gender has been marginalized, right now Black Lives need our action - they are the house that's on fire. We have compiled a list of resources so you can help. We stood with our community this week to show our support. We have been having educational conversations with our friends, colleagues, and family. We'll continue to enlighten ourselves and listen.
We will launch an online auction next week where 70% of proceeds will go to support Youth Care in Seattle to help end homelessness for the youth in our community. The majority of homeless youth are People of Color.
There's so much more we can do but this is our start. We are on the edge of real change in the United States. We can do better. We must do better.
I'll leave you here with this poem to help give us perspective on perhaps what the year of 2020 is really about.
What is 2020 isn't cancelled?
What if 2020 is the year we've been waiting for?
A year so uncomfortable, so painful, so scary, so raw -
that it finally forces us to grow.
A year that screams so loud, finally awakening us
from our ignorant slumber.
A year we finally accept the need for change.
Declare change. Work for change. Become the change.
A year we finally band together, instead of
pushing each other further apart.
2020 isn't cancelled, but rather
the most important year of them all.
-Leslie Dwight
Here I Stand,
Aljolynn Sperber
CEO & Founder
Lady Box
PLEASE HELP - HERE'S A LIST OF RESOURCES
Start anti-racism early. And inspire and encourage the youth to continue to stand up and speak out.
A list of Black-Owned Small Businesses can be found HERE.
Fight the system of homelessness.
Diversify your Instagram feed by following these Black Influencers.
Listen to different perspectives.
Harmonize your song choices.
Find some leadership in the darkness HERE.
Support this organization sending period supplies to protestors and menstruators in need or this organization helping menstruators in need across the globe.
And then a well thought out, ever expanding list of resources to REFERENCE DAILY HERE.
