Black Lives Matter: Walk With Us
On June 19th, also known as Juneteenth, members of our community gathered for our monthly Conscious Change Circle. Juneteenth marks the commemoration of the official end to slavery in 1865. Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, it took troops marching into Galveston, TX to finally ensure the freedom of all enslaved people. But, as we know, Black, Indigenous and People of Color in this country have continued to live with the same separation, hatred, exploitation, oppression, and injustice that slavery was founded upon. As we have faced in every previous moment, we are facing a call now to understand, heal, and repair our role in this system and the trauma it has caused for all people.
With diligence and mindfulness, Global Grassroots is in a deep, transformative process with our staff, board, and community, to examine our values and how we can do better to live those values within our organization and work. We know this time is about much more than statements and policies, and so we are seizing this opportunity to collectively go deeper and ask and answer the difficult questions about what additional change we need to make.
For 15 years we have been committed to healing and fighting injustice. Especially among African women and girls who have faced a long history of oppression and violence, on top of a history of genocide and colonialism. But as an American-founded organization, with an all-white leadership in this country, we know we have major blind spots and much work to do. A lot that we will need help with to go as deep as we want to. We also believe in the concept of leading from within, and so that is what we are doing. We are going deep within to affirm our core values and ensuring we are living by them. And we also know healing is a process that requires community and systemic social change to reach collective wellbeing and equality.
On our Juneteenth monthly Conscious Change Circle call, we took a step deeper into our individual and collective work, which we are continuing in our weekly staff meetings. We held space for practice and dialogue. We moved into our bodies and heart where so much of the intergenerational trauma is still held. We sat with discomfort. And we asked ourselves several core questions (many contained in the book, Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out, by Ruth King and inspired by the work of Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands):
How do I work with my thoughts, fears, and beliefs in ways that nurture the dignity of all races?
How do I comfort my own raging heart in a sea of racial ignorance and violence?
How can my actions reflect the world I want to live in and leave to future generations?
How do I advocate for racial justice without causing harm and hate, internally and externally?
What do I need? What do I need to do? What can I do?
Where do I find hope?
When we are willing to be in these spaces of discomfort, with courage and self-awareness, we can, in small steps, strengthen our ability to be aware and be with challenge (fear, anxiety, grief, shame, rage) so that we can go beyond and beneath, begin to release the trauma that is held in our bodies from our histories, and hear what is needed in our hearts. From here we can start to overcome our blind spots and contribute to the healing, systemic change, and justice necessary to fully honor the lives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in America and globally in the communities where we work. This may be a long process. But we are taking the first step. We are learning. And we invite you to walk with us.