Image by Shepard Fairey
“Hope is what will make you stand when everyone else is sitting, hope is what will make you speak when everyone else is silent.” Bryan Stevenson
It’s been a minute, or a to be truthful, a few months since I have written anything to you, but I honestly have been struggling with what to say. When I try too hard, sometimes my words feel flat and empty in comparison to the weight that I feel in my heart and our world. Over these past months, I have been waffling between digging my heels in to hope and being pulled under by hopelessness and the tension between the two has paralyzed my writing.
However, I recently attended a Phase II Racial Equity Training and an African-American woman and elder gave voice to her struggles with people, especially white people, who said that they were feeling hopeless. Her words stung and landed true as she asked the white people in the room, “Why are you even here in this training if you have no hope that things can change?”
In that moment in the group, I felt like she was talking directly to me. I pondered her question as I sat in this training and by listening, came to realize that Black and African American people, from the time of chattel slavery, have flown the flag of hope brazenly in the face of brutal facts. And if they can do it, I realized that I am a coward not to.
To guide me in feeling rooted and hopeful in my advocacy work, I lean into Bryan Stevenson’s work. Stevenson is an extraordinary African American man and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative based in Montgomery, Alabama, and he has gained global recognition for his work challenging injustice in the American legal system. He is also the author of the amazing book, Just Mercy. It is a powerful true story about his work with prisoners on death row and a call to fix our broken system of justice.
Stevenson says in order to change the world there are four practical steps which he believes take us on the journey toward real change in our communities and society.
- Get Approximate to the Problems We Care About
We can’t solve the world’s problems at a distance. We have to get up close to the people we want to serve, because that proximity supports us to truly understand them, their problems and the possible solutions. Getting approximate builds relationships and remember in this work, once is not enough. You have to not only stay close but build and maintain connection to the people/community to build a trusting relationship and truly listen to what they have to say. The solution is always in the communities voices.
2. Change the Narrative
The culture in the United States is one based on a narrative of scarcity, fear and anger. If we let more immigrants into the country they will take white people’s jobs; If we allow for affirmative action for minorities to have equal access to higher education, they will take white student’s places in college; the confederate flag as a symbol of southern heritage rather than a waving symbol of hate, rebellion and division. And then there is the flawed narrative of race where the American and White culture is attempting to suggest that slavery is a thing of the past when really it has evolved into a legacy of systemic racial inequality.
3. Maintain Hope (Even in the Face of Brutal Facts)
This is where Stevenson is the most passionate. Over his years of working with prisoners on death row, he has identified hope – driven and enabled by faith – as the key ingredient in fighting injustice for the long-term. Stevenson’s team of fifty lawyers all have to sign a statement of hope in order to be employed by him, “To work for me, you have to be able to believe what you have not seen,” he said, referencing the famous passage in the book of Hebrews.
“Hope is what will make you stand when everyone else is sitting, hope is what will make you speak when everyone else is silent.”
4. Do Uncomfortable Things
There is nothing wrong with being uncomfortable! In order to be contributing to change, you have to put yourself into new places and spaces that stimulate growth. When we don’t get out of our comfort zone, we are able to tune out and stay in our privilege because we do not have to face a similar level of oppression.
Putting yourself in new and unfamiliar situations triggers a unique part of the brain that releases dopamine, nature’s make-you-happy chemical. Here’s the mind-blower; that unique region of the brain is only activated when you see or experience completely new things!
Most of us do not enjoy the feeling of being uncomfortable, heck a lot of my white friends do even like to be inconvenienced! But it is something that I work on the daily to embrace. The challenge is to get past that initial feeling of wanting to return to the norm, so you can grow and benefit from that discomfort. This is the one of the most potent ways to become engaged in making change and as Stevenson says, “The pursuit of justice isn’t easy, it’s uncomfortable.”
What I have realized over the years is that my relationship to hope is complicated. And after doing advocacy work for some time, listening to People of Color, I am learning that hope is a practice and a discipline, not an emotional state. I practice hope in the aspiration of staying a decent human being in the face of the atrocities of the world. I practice not looking away from the hard news, the school shootings, the killing of unarmed Black and African American men, the voter suppression, the catastrophic climate change while simultaneously practicing not looking away from hope. I want to be able to hold all of this in its fullness. It is only then can I truly be awake and effective in my work.
So the question that I want to ask you is the same one that was asked of me, where do you feel the most challenged in these steps? Is your challenge in getting approximate to the problem or changing deep rooted narratives reinforcing the problem? Do you struggle with sitting in uncomfortable conversations or spaces or maintaining hope in the face of sometimes brutal facts?
