Reflecting on Recent Tragedies: The Call for Belonging, Love, and Justice
By Michael Brown, Chief Architect of Civic Commons, and Frank Nam, We Belong Here Project Director
This past week has been difficult for many members of our community. The start of the Lunar New Year should have been one of joy and celebration. Instead, it was one of heartbreak and horror. At the end of the week, once again we saw a young black man lose his life due to police violence. A friend and a colleague hosted a conversation focused on the social and political challenges facing the Jewish community.
We can’t help but note that “This past week has been difficult for many members of our community” is an opening that could apply to virtually any week on our nation’s calendar as each provides painful evidence that the struggle for acceptance and equality in our nation continues. Spikes of anti-Asian, antisemitic, anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and violence that promote othering rather than belonging are commonplace. We shrug or offer thoughts and prayers when it doesn’t happen to us, yet each shrug moves us away from each other when we need to move closer.
We do not have to live this way. We should not live this way. We can't afford to live this way much further. Now, more than ever, bridges must be built that cross our differences and connect our common humanity as opposed to living in heightened anxiety and fear. For many people of color, we did not believe the racial awakening of 2020 was going to be long-lasting, experience tells us the arc of change is protracted as systems do not change quickly. Yet we know each step forward can create a pathway to a more bountiful garden.
Late last year, Civic Commons introduced the product of three years of conversations. Together, our community created a new social contract for our region called the Greater Seattle Compact for Belonging. After many discussions with community members, we honed on three values: Love, Justice, and Belonging.
Love and Justice are intertwined. Dr. Cornell West calls justice, "love in public.” Justice is largely policies and laws. Justice both seeks to right wrongs but also to prevent them. Justice creates safeguards and guardrails. But we cannot create a law that makes one person care for another. We can't make a law that makes you love your neighbor. That's impossible. If justice is love in public, then belonging is the bridge between the two. Belonging is the union of the justice and love, yet it also stands alone. If we can do what Professor john a. powell asks and expand our circle of human trust, then belonging grows and love and justice meld together more seamlessly.
How do we take the words of Dr. West and Dr. powell and put it into personal action? Storytelling. We all have our own stories and our own experiences. How can we share our stories in a collective manner? Two years ago, we saw a great example in our region when Our Stories are your Stories (OSAYS ) launched. The founders captured the stories of former Seahawk, Doug Baldwin, Viets4Afghans', Uyen Nguyen, and former Governor, Gary Locke to help non-Asian-American Pacific-Islander/Native Hawaiians to connect with the larger AAPI/NH community. OSAYS was a direct response to another moment of tragedy, the Atlanta spa shootings.
And now we find ourselves caught up in the swells of tragedy and violence once again. It is during these historical maelstroms that we need to tie our life rafts together. We need to tether our stories of grief and hope and ride out the storm as a larger, more connected community.
At Civic Commons, we do not have an answer to what we face, but we share a common hope and insight on moving forward. We ask you to tie your life rafts to us and to others. We cannot afford to keep doing the same things as before. Let us share our stories of Belonging, Love, and Justice with one another and sail towards more hopeful shores.