Dear readers,
During Black History Month, we ground ourselves in the recognition that the Office of Equity would not be here without the work of Black community leaders and members, and their resounding demands for respect and change.
This Office was created in the summer of 2020, just weeks after the killing of George Floyd generated protests around the world, as well as here in our own community.
As we embark on our process of creating safe and brave spaces in which to learn, critically investigate and scrutinize, and reconstruct our systems and institutions to redress and correct the historical injustices that we will see clearly in the light of equity, we are inspired by the words of Audre Lorde.
The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized.
This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are – until the poem – nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.
That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.
As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.
The Office of Equity embraces this vision for the achievement of our Board’s new racial equity and social justice goals and objectives: we need and can create the quality of light that allows us to see and make a future where we all experience the beauty of our community and its gifts, together.
You may read more of Ms. Lorde here, or listen to more of her poetry here.
