In mid-Decmber 2019, I shared the following speech as part of “Voicing our Activism,” a training for BRIDGE staff with Shakespeare & Co. with Tina Packer, MaConnnia Chesser, and more.
My name is Gwendolyn VanSant. Many of you know me for our BRIDGE work that reaches far and wide. Thank you for joining me for a few moments for an important conversation.
Today I want to share BRIDGE’s founding story and ask you to join me in taking BRIDGE work to the next level of transformative social change. I co-founded this organization at the edges and intersections of some racially charged and gender-biased assaults on me and my family while working as a translator with newly arrived Latina women and their children and realizing the impact of generational poverty on local White families. As an African American woman, I confronted the professional bias of not being perceived as expert enough to support doctors, police, and teachers in their service to these new immigrants. As an interpreter, I noticed who was feeling left behind. As an educator, I realized how much education was lacking for us all. As a resident in our county, I saw invisible communities, saw the connective tissue of shared trauma, and began to hear what were unheard voices, similar but different to my own. And I thought I could help!
I realize now after over a decade of steady work that what I want to do is create a Reparations movement for people and their families at all ages and stages of awareness and growth. And I need your help. I want every human to embrace their accountability to one another in the form of their embodied love in action. I believe that reparations (i.e. active gestures of love, repair, and care) will lead to healing the harm caused by racism, sexism, and the impact of capitalism.
The Reparations Movement is important to me because my family and I, and so many just like us, have experienced and continue to experience daily the isolation and judgement as well as invisible and inexcusable harms of almost every institutionalized structure in our society. The Justice system, healthcare system, education system, just to name a few. Thankfully, there have been folks along my path to do repair, bridge a painful moment, and help me restore and heal in heartFULL ways.
Even still, our families face the tyrannies of oppression. We face the potential death of our sons each time they walk in the streets in their full selves—especially if they wear a black hoodie. We prepare them to be met with fear and hostility. We prepare our children not to be loved. We face the 228 years it will take for the average Black family to reach the average wealth of a White family today, and meanwhile the average White family’s wealth will continue to grow at the rate it has over the past 30 years (84%). By 2043, when the US will no longer be majority White, the wealth gap will be triple what it is now in favor of White families over Black families. By design —you need to hold this truth… by design—this continues to occur. This has been well-studied globally, and U.S. policies have created these odds. The U.S. has secured the supremacy of Whiteness to stand the test of time. The German Nazis came here to study our racialized policies. The U.S. was the model for oppression to last the centuries.
Somehow we thrive nonetheless, but it is against all odds. Right now Black women are the majority when it comes to entrepreneurship, and for the past two primary election cycles, women of color have dominated the increasing participation of women across the political landscape. We, people of color, are the global majority.
Even still, the battle for vitality and safety can take its toll on our families. Again, I am privileged enough to have had the opportunity in my life to have folks try to mitigate the heavy legacy of trauma this country has handed my family and families like mine to help me further my mission and ministry. I’m privileged enough to have the moral and intellectual fortitude to understand my value, my resources, and my worth, and to seek the spiritual power to stand strong and steady… to pursue healing, speak the truth, and challenge the threats that racism and capitalism pose to us all.
I am committed to creating the conditions for ripples of personal and cultural healing and repair. I am committed to cultivating the conditions to counter the riptides of harm and death by oppression, patriarchal and white supremacy thinking and behaviors. I am committed to countering the riptides of harm that I speak of by engaging everyone where they stand right now to join in this conversation and action.
So I am inviting you to join me in this movement.
You might wonder what you can do if you are not of the “privileged” economic class. So I ask you... Will you plant a garden for that new neighbor you forgot to welcome? Will you send a letter affirming and acknowledging the value-add of a co-worker or colleague who goes overlooked or worse yet, who experiences micro-aggressions every day? Will you contribute to a scholarship, retirement, or caregiver fund for a family who cannot afford (or may not even know about) that level of family security? Will you volunteer at your local nonprofit, school committee, or church to improve the lives of folks with less access than you? Will you reach out to develop a relationship so people experience care and connection and feel seen, heard, and understood?
And for others here today. I have an additional set of questions. Will you commit to a financial gift to BRIDGE so BRIDGE can continue its anti-racism and gender equity work? Will you look at your assets (i.e. your sphere of influence and wealth) and then invest a percentage of those resources in programs that support women and girls or historically marginalized groups such as Native Americans and African Americans? Will you support them in their business, educational, and family ventures and dreams? Will you dedicate your land for a community land trust to benefit marginalized and threatened communities, or will you gift a parcel to an indigenous tribe or historically marginalized group with little to no access to land, home ownership, and generational financial stability? There is no either/or here; we have ALL been sold a bill of goods that is false. Our liberation, survival, and happiness is tied to the liberation, survival, and happiness of those around us.
Wherever you are on your journey, I am inviting you to step in to this healing work and create ripples of justice by repairing harm and joining this Reparations movement. I am inviting you to make your personally meaningful commitment now and join me in creating ripples of positive social impact. There are so many ways to take your first small, brave step or your first giant, courageous leap into love in action—towards healing and repair—so that we all can be held accountable to each other’s ability to flourish and thrive in our own vitality.
Will you join me? It is time!
© 2019 Gwendolyn VanSant