11. Be very thoughtful about your media diet (and your
children's). Spend less time looking at screens.
13. Think about your network. Who are you touching?
What are you putting out and taking in?
14. Understand government better, know that you are
a constituent, and stay in effective touch with your
representatives.
15. Consider running for office or taking
a government job.
22. Reject ever-escalating expectations —for yourself, for others, for your
experiences. Think about the role that social media might be playing
in your perceptions of your life, and of others’ lives.
23. Be joyful about the fact that you are alive, and still have time
to make a difference, in your own life and in the lives of others.
24. Help your kids write actual, physical letters to your elected
representatives at all levels. Urge your kids to remind them of
their responsibility to take care of America’s future.
25. Look people in the eye. Smile and say hello.
26. Don't let barriers deter you. Anytime you say
—to yourself, or out loud— “I can’t go there”
. . . figure out how to go there.
Here are some things* that I have been
doing and that I plan to do more of
going forward. Maybe you’ll want to
try them, too.
1. There is, of course, one very important
thing in the mix besides race and power: MONEY, much of it money that flows
out of our own pockets every day.
Our consumer choices
are under our full control.
2. Think very carefully about every dollar
you spend and where that money
ends up. Don’t fund hate or
corruption or injustice or
environmental degradation.
More specifically, look out for
companies whose owners support agendas that marginalize
minorities, women, children,
and immigrants. Reward companies
that try to do good.
3. Support non-profits that work
to supplement government
services that may be in jeopardy.
6. In any group setting, seek out points of view different from your own. Find your own voice, and use it. Amplify
voices that are not being heard.
4. If you’re afraid,don’t give into fear.
5. Get outside your comfort zone
in as many ways as you can.
* List by Kelly Bare,
IntegratedSchools.org
What Can YOU Do
To Bring People Together?
Verna Myers,
16. Balance careful examination
of data with careful reading of human stories.
17. Strive for emotional intelligence. Nurture it in your
friends, your family.
18. Be vigilant, and speak up for anyone who is being
threatened. Lend your power for good.
21. Stop being “too busy” to connect with other people.
20. Reconsider your definition of "good."
27. And finally, crucially:
Go out of your way to join up with people who don’t look
or think like you —at a church, or a community garden,
at a gym, with a sports team, or at a club. Then talk to
them.
Be open to discovering how much more spiritually
sustaining a more diverse community can be. Be open
to joining, or creating, a beloved community of your own.
Go on a Black Lives Matter march, or join in any march
or rally for a marginalized group.
And if you have kids, put them into the most racially and
socio-economically diverse schools you can. Put your
back into making those schools even more diverse and
making them great, which includes not only fundraising,
but also making them places of real connection and
dialogue.
Participate in that school community to the fullest extent
possible. See what you learn. How it feels. Stay through
the icky and uncomfortable stuff —there will be icky and
uncomfortable stuff.
“Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being
asked to dance ...so let’s dance. Get to know someone
who’s different from you. You may have tried
to do this before only to feel
excluded or misunderstood. Try again.
The exchange of your stories will serve
as a bridge that connects you.”
7. Consider, and meditate on, the idea that our core national problems
are failures to truly grapple with institutional racism and sexism.
8. Educate yourself on unconscious bias, and try to find some training in that area, maybe through your job. If none exists at your church or workplace, ask them to start it up.
9. Seek out relationships with people who are different from you. Have conversations with people whose opinions are different from yours — including people who
voted differently. It is urgent that you talk with them and learn
what they were thinking, and make them part of the plan
to unite our country going forward.
10. Look forward and back --study
more history. Study, in particular,
the history of the Jim Crow era,
the Great Migration, the Civil Rights
movement.
12. Check your facts. Check your sources of information. Think critically.
19. Wear your heart on your sleeve —literally. Wear something
that reveals on your outside what you believe on the inside,
and hope that it sparks conversations. Participate in those
conversations. Listen.
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"As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality
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Nelson Mandela
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