BRATTLEBORO — I was recently reminded of a story I heard in West Africa.
For many years Vermont Partnership resembled Kanté, the son of the blacksmith, tossing stones into the great crevice separating him and the rest of the village from Khadija and her family.
After a while, villagers one by one begin to help Kanté accomplish his goal by finding and tossing stones of their own into the great crevice. In many ways, Vermont Partnership was the lone villager tossing stones on behalf of social justice until others arrived.
We are proud to report that a growing number have been busy in recent years breaking out of the comforts of being well-intentioned community members and into community members acting with intention on behalf of strengthening fairness and diversity in Windham County.
This transformation, I believe, is part of the silver lining of the aftermath of the discovery and dismantling of the NHRA hate group here in Brattleboro a few years ago.
Little could we imagine the cascade of actions to follow when Vermont Partnership, then known as ALANA, convened that first group of concerned community members and town leadership in the Hanna Cosman room in the Municipal Center in June 2008.
Among these initiatives, the Racial Issues Steering Committee, a cross section of community leaders, has been meeting since July 2008 to plot and conduct activities to strengthen inclusiveness and equity in our community.
As a member of this group, we held a greater Brattleboro-wide strategic planning conference known as Future Search in February 2009, entitled “Imaging a Community Free of Prejudice and Discrimination.”
This steering committee also has been organizing the Celebrate Diversity Day here in Brattleboro on the first Friday of May in collaboration with area schools and the business community.
Both the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union and the Windham Northeast Supervisory Union's district-wide diversity and equity working groups have ramped up their actions to bring education that is multicultural into classrooms.
Others on the committee are working to ensure the greater Brattleboro area is recognized as the informed and practiced epicenter of diversity and equity expertise in Vermont with the vision that Vermont is recognized as the national leader in affirming the demographic shift to a more multiracial, multicultural society.
We need more visible state/national leadership to address the demographic shift, and right here in Windham County we have a unique mix of underutilized individual and institutional expertise. Keep your ears and eyes open for a major statewide conference on diversity practices later this year or early next.
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Other initiatives include Families First and Guilford Community Church working together on connecting isolated rural youth to personal growth and recreational opportunities. Southern Vermont Undoing Racism Collaborative organized an anti-racism workshop facilitated by the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond.
In addition to these new initiatives, we want to acknowledge the ongoing work of four groups that have created opportunities for dialogue on issues of inclusive and equitable communities.
These include the Women's Film Festival, with its eclectic offerings of social justice films; Sandglass Theater, with which we partner to bring outstanding performers from minority arts communities to area schools; and the New England Youth Theater and the theater program at the Brattleboro Union High School, both of which have delved into the unchartered waters of social justice. We are also grateful for contributions to promote diversity by both the Vermont Jazz Center and the Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center.
Increasingly and pleasantly, we find ourselves in a supporting role of the work of others or, in some cases, no role at all.
For example, the Brattleboro Area Interfaith Clergy Association spearheaded the community response to clean the hate graffiti from the Dummerston quarry and the desecration of the cross at St. Michael's Catholic Church. More recently a group of residents in Bellows Falls protested the treatment of a visiting black American physician by “Mike the Barber” in Bellows Falls.
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Population diversity challenges our values of inclusiveness and equity, and two mindsets challenge these values.
The first is when elected officials, policy makers, public servants, social service professionals, and civic leaders perceive Vermonters as an able-bodied, racially, and ethnically homogenous group. This mindset contributes significantly to the social isolation of ethnic, racial, and linguistic minority populations and persons with disabilities and inhibits the affirmation of these populations in their communities.
Similarly, the mindset of our democratic institutions and public services as inherently unfair among minorities and persons with disabilities constrains civic engagement on the part of these rapidly growing segments of our population. These mindsets and the indifference they breed have thwarted efforts to build inclusive and equitable communities.
Changing these mindsets and corresponding behaviors constitute the nexus of our collective work.
And so what does that mean in practical terms?
It means acknowledging that each of us has a sphere of influence. Actually, we have multiple spheres of influence. These are places where what you do or say significantly impacts others within your sphere.
Think for a moment, where do you have influence? And don't fall into that self-deprecating or modesty trap of, “Oh, I don't have any influence anywhere!”
Think for a moment: your spheres could be around the dinner table at home, your workplace, places of worship, service clubs, nonprofit boards of directors, where you recreate or spend leisure time, on the BeeLine or MooVer bus lines, in soup kitchens, schools or selectboards, or corporate boardrooms here in Vermont or beyond.
Don't deny it - you have influence.
When you see or suspect injustice, we want you to exercise the full extent of your influence to conspicuously and courageously voice that the space where you reside or work be free of prejudice and discrimination. Everyone deserves to live or visit here without the fear of bullying, harassment, bigotry, or violence.
And so - to you, the great silent majority of the well-intentioned - we ask for your support to join with others to act with intention within your own spheres of influence to strengthen fairness and diversity wherever you conduct business, wherever you work, and wherever you play.
And for those of you who are fearful of being conspicuously courageous on behalf of fairness and diversity, I will leave you with the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“More often than not, fear involves the misuse of the imagination.”