Please read my remarks below from Sunday, November 14 at the 2020 Mass. Black Expo of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts to introduce a virtual screening of Dr. Angela Davis’ (excerpted) keynote presentation at BRIDGE’s New Pathways Social Justice Conference November 6-9, 2020.
Good afternoon! My name is Gwendolyn VanSant, CEO and Founding Director of BRIDGE. As I live in the hometown of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, I serve as Vice Chair and founding Member of the Du Bois Legacy Committee of the Town of Great Barrington.
BRIDGE is a small but mighty organization in the Berkshires, the “real” Western Mass all the way at the end of the Mass Pike. We serve as a minority and women-run supplier diversity program for the Commonwealth in equity and inclusion work, building cultural competence foundations across sectors, and creating pathways of access for communities and individuals. And I cannot tell you how much our staff has enjoyed and been inspired by being a part of BECMA as a new member and benefitting from this fabulous weekend.
At BRIDGE, we center our work around racial justice and address disparities in the representation and reflection of our diverse communities in the workplaces and at the decision-making tables in our County and beyond. Constantly we are seeking solutions to Dr. Angela Davis’ question,
“How do we build movements capable of generating the power to compel governments and corporations to curtail their violence?”
― Angela Y. Davis, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture
In addition to our business work, we have a robust community program where we have been sustaining a mutual aid effort (based on a dozen years of relationship building), facilitating the delivery of food, resources, and gift cards to Black and brown families in need throughout our rural county that runs north to south of our State footprint. We have been doing this for 34 weeks to 90 families since the first onset of quarantine. We also have a strong racial justice organizing group of activists and allies.
Dr. Davis reminds us…
“I don't think we can rely on governments, regardless of who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do.”
― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
New Pathways is a program born in April 2020 out of the pandemic reflecting the glaring racial disparities and isolation experienced by our communities while the power structures circled the wagons around resources. We have been about creating the space to intentionally acknowledge and build a road that does not lead us “back to normal” because normal has been a dead end for so many.
2020 has brought us the clear vision that we can’t go back, only forward. Social justice is about shifting resources of money, wealth, attention, and value toward positive social impact. That shape shifting will create new paradigms and new tables to sit at. Our New Pathways Social Justice conference that just closed on Monday, November 9th, brings all of this work together. Over 400 people gathered from across the country and off the mainland in the Virgin Islands and Jamaica. This is one of the benefits during COVID that digital strategies have brought us… bringing us all in the movement closer together.
We were fortunate enough to have our request accepted to feature Dr. Angela Davis as our keynote speaker alongside other headliners to charge us forward in our five day conference. Speakers like Greg Watson who is currently at the Schumacher Society for new Economics and served as the former founding director of Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury, Malia Lazu who I have been blessed to know and work with these last two years, Gibrán Rivera, and also we were fortunate to have Segun Idowu as one of our Urban Labs featured panelists just this past Monday!
It is BRIDGE’s great honor to share a special screening of Dr. Davis’ keynote here today, which we only just shared at our conference last Sunday evening! Enjoy!
Closing
I hope you are as filled and inspired by Angela Davis’ words as much as I am. It is hard to follow Dr. Davis here, so I am just going to thank you all for tuning in! We will be uploading the remaining New Pathways conference talks for you to enjoy over the next few weeks at our website, mulitculturalbridge.org.
Please visit our exhibition hall, and we will be in touch. And again I want to thank BECMA and especially Segun for this opportunity to join this network. We are here to pave new pathways of transformative justice and healing while we move the dial collectively on race, class, and justice strategies. And we look forward to partnering with many of you.
I leave us with Dr. Davis’ quote from last Sunday…
“Abolition is not primarily about the negative act of elimination and revocation … but rather it is about a process of re-creation and building something new… We do not get rid of the old and assume that the new will be constructed on the same foundation as the old. We create new foundations, new footprints, new institutions, new societies.”
I for one cannot wait for her new book coming in March 2021, Abolition. Feminism. Now. It has been a pleasure.
I also want to give a shout out and thank you to Stephanie Wright, Don’Jea Smith and Maya Richards who have been at the Expo with BRIDGE this weekend!
Be well!