Rays of Hope a Year Later

It has been a year now since the United States began to lock down, and almost exactly a year since I began the daily "pandemic uplift" e-mails that later became this blog. It has been a catastrophic year by any measure. No community has been left untouched by COVID-19. Many, including BIPOC communities, immigrants and refugees, and essential workers -- among whom there may be substantial overlap -- have been especially hard hit. Here in the U.S., over 530,000 of our siblings have died, and the death toll continues to climb.

This is a solemn anniversary, indeed. 

It has been more than a year, as well, since the brutal murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Tomorrow will also mark one year since Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by Louisville police after they forced entry into her apartment. So much pain and grief was unleashed by these senseless killings, and magnified by the killing of George Floyd, the paralyzing of Jacob Blake, and so many other assaults upon Black bodies. 

We continue to mourn on this anniversary.

Yet, there are rays of hope. 

Vaccines are arriving in greater quantities, and we are on track to exceed the "one hundred million doses in one hundred days" goal that President Biden set when he took office. While there are still too many problems in scheduling appointments and we must do much more to make vaccine delivery more equitable, we can be grateful that there is a light on the horizon now. By May 1, all are expected to be eligible. And when all in a group are fully vaccinated, we can begin to gather in person with family and friends again.

With the new administration, we are seeing some long overdue change. For most of our history as a nation, only men -- and almost exclusively White men -- were elected to our presidency and vice presidency. Now women, including South Asian and Black women, know that they are welcome in the executive branch. For young children now, the U.S. will always be a country where women and BIPOC people can hold the highest offices in the land. 

Our new Secretary of Defense, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, is the first Black person to lead the Pentagon; our new Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas,  is the first Latino and immigrant to serve in that position; and on Monday the Senate will vote on the confirmation of Rep. Deb Haaland, nominee for Secretary of the Interior, to become the first Indigenous Cabinet secretary. Men and women of color have already been confirmed to five other Cabinet-level positions, with further nominees awaiting confirmation.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg now serves as our first openly LGBTQ Cabinet secretary. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been confirmed as the first woman to head the Department of the Treasury, but what is even more important is that, as President Biden tells us, "[s]he has spent her career focused on unemployment and the dignity of work. She understands what it means to people and their communities when they have good, decent jobs." Her Treasury Department biography explains more about her research findings that businesses do better when they offer better pay and benefits to their workers.

Today, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. According to the Urban Institute, this legislation has the potential to reduce the overall poverty rate for 2021 by more than one-third and cut child poverty by more than half. It has been called the most far-reaching anti-poverty program in more than 50 years; we have to go back to President Johnson's War on Poverty to find a similar effort to systematically address the root causes of poverty.

Taking into account four key components of the new legislation, the Urban Institute calculates that the 2021 poverty rate among Black non-Hispanic people will fall 42%; that Hispanics will see a 39% decrease; and that White non-Hispanic people will see a 34% drop in poverty, thereby reducing the disparities in poverty rates among these two BIPOC groups relative to Whites.

Yesterday the House passed two gun control bills that would require background checks for all gun buyers and extend the time for the F.B.I. to vet prospective gun buyers. Both bills address the "Charleston loophole," which limits federal authorities to only three days for a background check. It was this limitation that enabled a White supremacist to buy the handgun with which he killed nine Black people at an AME church in Charleston, S.C. in 2015. They will face sure opposition from Republicans in the Senate, but both bills have wide voter support.

The For the People Act of 2021 passed in the House on March 3, and the Senate will take up its version of the bill soon. While a number of state legislatures are working to enact voter suppression laws, this federal legislation would make it easier to vote in federal elections, end congressional gerrymandering, crack down on voter intimidation and the spread of disinformation about voting rights, and restore voting rights to people convicted of a felony who have completed their sentences. 

Today the Minneapolis City Council unanimously agreed to pay a record $27 million to George Floyd's family, the largest pretrial settlement in a civil rights wrongful death case in U.S. history. This comes as the trial of the White police officer accused of killing him is just getting under way with a newly reinstated third degree murder charge added to unintentional murder and manslaughter charges.

No amount of money could give George Floyd the life taken from him, or make up for his family's unspeakable loss. But as their lawyer points out, the large settlement sends a powerful statement about the value of Black lives.

There are other bright spots of hope. 

The Cherokee Nation, one of the largest tribes in the country, recently took steps to right a longstanding point of racial friction with the thousands of descendants of Black people who were enslaved by the tribe before the Civil War. Those descendants, known as Freedmen, have been pushing for equal status as tribal members, based upon an 1866 treaty laying out their terms of emancipation and a 2017 federal court ruling in their favor. Late last month, the Oklahoma tribe finally removed from its Constitution language that based citizenship on being descended "by blood" from tribal members listed on a 19th-century census.

Closer to home, Respond to Racism continues its "neighborhood effort to interrupt racism in Lake Oswego, Oregon," through community meetings, education, student mentoring, and empowerment. You can watch recent community meetings here. And Common Table, a broad gathering of interfaith leaders and practitioners from throughout Oregon, works to act in the public sphere through peacemaking and public advocacy and witness. After publishing "A Public Commitment: Faith Leaders Reckon with Racist Legacy in Oregon,"  last summer the group convened a nine-month "Reckoning with Racism" cohort, inviting "people of faith across the state into a deliberate process of dismantling racism inside your faith community or institution and out in the public square." 42 faith communities or organizations are participating, with upwards of 200 participants at the twice-monthly sessions. As one of those participants, I can tell you that there is hard work going on here.

There is much more hard work to be done. And while there are many, many other places to look for hope, it is also true that the work will outlive all of us. That's all the more reason to do what we can do to dismantle White supremacy in our lifetimes.

I'll close with Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr.'s admonition that the Cherokee Nation needs to confront its history of enslavement and the persistent impacts of not recognizing the Freedmen as full Cherokee citizens. Likewise, we as a nation need to confront our history of enslavement and the ongoing harms of not recognizing all Americans as valued citizens and all people as our siblings. It's up to us to do our part. 

Love,

Nancie/Mom/Mimi/Grandma