LGC stands in solidarity with the Black Community and all of those demanding an end to police brutality, racism, and injustice in all forms. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more are painful and intolerable.
Our nation is being rattled to its core with the dual pandemics of pervasive and systemic racism and COVID-19 and the related suffering also disproportionately impacting people of color in our nation.
Our country is in turmoil because we, as governments, organizations, and individuals, haven’t done enough to address and end racism. Black Americans should not have to face lower odds of survival and prosperity across every measure of wellbeing in this country let alone the fear of violence from law enforcement.
Our mission at LGC is to build livable communities, including ensuring access to transportation options, housing, clean air and other natural resources and safe public spaces. When Black Americans, can’t safely jog, bird watch, or go to a dog park, we know we aren’t getting it right.
In MLK’s famed words, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. As Ibram X. Kendi noted in reflecting on George Floyd's death,
“It's not enough to imagine there are bad apples. You know, we need to recognize that there's something wrong with the tree.”
Much of our nation’s past and current systems have oppressed black people, and people of color for generations. None of us are free until all of us are free. None of us are well until all of us are well.
We are not free until all of us can go to the store or go on a run, or drive in a car, play in our parks, sleep in our beds without threat to our lives. Building livable communities requires starting at the point where there is not livability. Building livable communities requires starting at the point of oppression. Building livable communities means facing and working to eliminate the threats to the black and brown lives in our communities. As, Roxane Gay stated over the weekend: “
The rest of the world yearns to get back to normal. For black people, normal is the very thing from which we yearn to be free.”
We stand in solidarity with the fight for justice, for livability, for liberation. We stand in solidarity for a future that is anything but normal as the norm has not served those of us who are black and brown well, the norm has not been livable, the norm has not been safe, healthy, or whole. We stand in solidarity with black and brown lives and futures. For livability to matter, black lives must matter.
Local Government Commission
