We are the change.

 

We see you.

 

To all of the parents working hard to keep their kids safe and trying to find the right words to explain why these gross injustices persist — we see you.
To our youth who have worked so hard to navigate this most difficult and painful year with strength and resilience — we believe in you.
Teachers, administrators and school staff who have done everything possible to help ensure there was even a school year during this pandemic while helping your students navigate all of our societal afflictions — we support you.
For all of the allies helping us fight for a world where Black lives matter, where systems of structural inequity have been transformed, where our persistence in a movement is powered by our constant vigilance to see, then change, our own contributions on this journey — we thank you.

Our team, our community, was reminded this week that there can still be grief, heaviness and heartbreak, even in the wake of justice. We acknowledge and value that there was justice.

And we must also continue to pursue the light and the hope that the arc of the moral universe shines on us as it continues its bend toward justice.

Its curve is not fashioned by time itself — we are the change. 

While this moment has settled, we have a responsibility to embrace the part of our humanity in which our youth is specialized. 

Imagination.

Untethered by a discount on its tactical purpose in our society, imagination is not to be taken lightly. This isn’t a question about one incident and one life tragically taken. Change rests in our ability to reimagine a different kind of system, because it too was on trial. It, too, was guilty. And we can change it.

Let us reimagine public safety…

In a way that keeps George Floyd from ever having to call out for his Mama.

Where policing and the penal system is not our only answer to public safety or crime.

To put our solutions and transformational capital toward the ills in our society upstream into mental health supports, deconstructing concentrated poverty, youth and adult education and upskilling pathways.

So as a father myself, my son won’t have to cry with tears filled with fear and confusion as I try my best to explain to him what’s going on each time these injustices happen.

This verdict was important, but the arc doesn’t bend itself. We bend it.

Let us not be complacent. We have work to do. So. Much. Work.
And youth — the mavens of imagination — are the people we need to reimagine and then create the world we’ve never seen, but that we all deserve.
The team at Big Thought stands by you, our work centers around you and we will continue to fight for justice alongside you.

With hope,

Byron Sanders
President & CEO
Big Thought