PUTNEY — I am making a significant gift to an remarkable local project of the Black and Indigenous led/owned SUSU commUNITY Farm.
They are more than halfway to their goal. Wouldn't it be incredible to fund them the whole way? Life is better for everybody when we invest in an equitable future.
So many of us care deeply. Just look at all the Black Lives Matter signs!
I have taken the next step of tangible support for Black leadership.
I celebrate Black entrepreneurship, Black joy, and Black power. I support good health and vitality for all BIPOC people.
I am an American who benefits from property ownership. If you are, too, please consider your own liberating act of what I'm calling citizen reparations.
I believe reparations to African Americans are needed after four centuries of systemic racism and oppression that, on top of brutal enslavement, have deprived our Black compatriots their Constitutional rights. Quite literally, they have been deprived of their life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
For me, it is clear that the laws, culture, and norms of our nation have made it easier for me and other white people to earn, keep, and increase wealth, and health, and education, and job opportunities.
Hanging our heads does no one any good. We can start to make things right.
The odds weren't stacked against us at almost every turn. People of my color have had many advantages, including, for some, inherited money that we did not earn. If we comfortable people give only what amounts to spare change, is that generosity, or is that crumbs?
Owning a house and land gives me security and comfort. I have the choice to share wealth, to hold onto family heirlooms, to grow food or flowers, to plant trees. I can even rent out rooms in my house.
Of course, I'd like to see the federal government act on reparations. And other groups deserve real amends as well - Indigenous peoples and Japanese Americans imprisoned during World War II, for example. But I don't want to wait for the government to act. All of our well-being depends on generosity and healing.
I'm so fortunate that I'm finally able to take a step. I highly recommend becoming part of the bright future that we can create. It feels hopeful.
Black Americans want their families and their neighbors - all of us, far and wide! - to thrive.
Supporting SUSU commUNITY Farm or another Black-led or Black-owned enterprise is a fantastic way to be part of the upward trend and leave regret and hurt and guilt behind - and to plant seeds for an anti-racist future.