One person at a time, one kindness
Last night again I was up, connected by I-phone to the people of Powderhorn. Their neighborhood is amazing. The residents were all watching out for each other, reporting on the movements of suspected KKK in the park, the National Guard, the police … gunshots, fires exploding, businesses burning… and I was reflecting, this is our country? Not since the demonstrations of the ’60s have I felt the depth of pain, rage, and sorrow of so many people. How do we heal? How do we do better? I don’t know. But I do know that the citizens of Powderhorn are once again picking up their shovels and brooms and helping with the cleaning up. Together. Black, brown, white, Muslim, Unitarian, Catholic, young, old, parents and children.
We begin with one person at a time, one kindness. We begin with ourselves. —Nancy Bo Flood
Words from Michelle Obama on May 29, 2020, @MichelleObama on Twitter:
It’s up to all of us—Black, white, everyone—no matter how well-meaning we think we might be, to do the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting it out. It starts with self-examination and listening to those whose lives are different from our own.
It ends with justice, compassion, and empathy that manifests in our lives and on our streets. I pray we all have the strength for that journey, just as I pray for the souls and the families of those who were taken from us.
Words from Eleanor Roosevelt:
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?
In small places, close to home—
so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world….
Unless these rights have meaning there,
they have little meaning anywhere.
A beautiful reflection from NPR: Take a moment to read these words, I think you will be glad you did.
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks to E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and the Brookings Institution and David Brooks of The New York Times about How Presidents Lead in Times of National Mourning, to bring us together as a nation, not to divide nor encourage violence and hatred.
An OpEd that followed the interview, “If We Had a Real Leader. Imagining Covid under a normal president,” by David Brooks, May 28, 2020.