Monthly Archives: October 2020

Bringing an Imaginative Dimension to Our Real-World Spaces and Places

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I’ve had a lot of time to think about this next topic for my blog post. For several weeks now, I’ve been focusing on what solutions look like for social justice or even some resources for individuals to follow and learn. For this blog post for this week, I will do my best in explaining imaginative dimension in real world spaces and places. What does this look like? I think that would involve all of our leaders discussing important issues in a civilized manner and re-creating a world where individuals can be accepted and not fall into prejudice and racism.

Over the last ten years, the discussion that’s been happening within our country regarding healthcare and even politics have become more heated than ever. It’s also come to the point where some elected officials have started to share false information regarding facts or from the candidate. My wish for everyone running for any type of office would be to have civilized discussions and not to cut off anyone when debating their important points. It feels like more people in higher authority are willing to cut people off and not letting them finish their statement.

Another point for the real world would be for individuals to be accepted and not be around prejudice and racism. In our society, more tolerance is coming into play with issues like social justice LGBTQ+ rights and abortion. I think our thinking of the real world in spaces can play into the simple fact of accepting everyone, having little to no arguments and not having a division among ourselves.

These two points that I’ve made should not be hard for people to implement regularly. Hopefully, I’ve imagined some type of drive to look at what the real world spaces and places would look like in the near future. Even if it doesn’t happen, maybe it Can happen in huge cities and grow from there.

Social Connections

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For social justice, many voices are needed to be heard. This can be from individuals that have been treated unfairly by law enforcement or even from victims of family members sharing their experiences. In the last couple of years, social connections have been very strong and meaningful to realize some of the issues that are happening on a national stage. Our realization with social connection is important for mental health reasons and utilizing social media to share our message across.

Being able to flush out our frustrations and our emotions are one strong thing for us evoke strong reactions in a heavily emotional topic. Our social connection in a larger community is tied with mental health because a lot of people can vent and pour out their emotions with the thoughts they’re currently thinking about or want to do with their communities. Many people need various spaces to share their stories and for people to listen, respond positively or don’t even need to say anything at all.

Social media is still a strong player when you want to get your voice out in a quick amount of time. Not only this, but your message can be strong and resonate with dozens of people. Social media presence attention can be shared through friends, business networks and even local groups that can be shared through different regions of the country and across the world. For the larger community, the social connection can be anyone in different walks of life and ethnicities.

Connecting with various people are important and should be the main point when you talk about social justice. The start of social connection can be tied with bringing the community together to talk with police and local leaders to change the way things are structured.

Different Places, Different Experiences

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Thursday August 15th 2020. That was the first day I started my grad experience and my permanent residence in the state of Minnesota. For the next two years, I knew that I would interact with a lot of people that are not from the same area where I grew up. My first couple of weeks in Minnesota was a huge culture shock to me. Not only its in an area where it gets cold a lot but a lot of segregation within the cities in the state. What’s the purpose in me telling you this? Many people have experiences that others may not know about. The ways you can forge solidarity is by listening to others and to take part in activities, in which you can explore those differences online or in person.

Everybody listens to someone in some sort of capacity on a daily basis. Whether its in person, virtually on a computer or even through handwritten letters, there are effective ways that you can share anything that’s on your mind that’s happening with you and/or various people. When it deals with racial justice, there is no better time to listen to other black and people of color that have been subjected to harassment or not taking incidents seriously in their own neighborhood. Listening to just an experience that may not effect you should effect in a serious way to take immediate action and hold those parties responsible of what they’ve done. In addition, listening can also influence major changes with laws and the way that individuals should be approached by law enforcement. This can have more positive relationships with the police.

When anyone participates in activity surrounding anti-racism or solutions for racial justice, they are making the effort to make a change within their communities in which they live in. Bringing people together to talk about the issues and highlighting the people that have been severely impacted by that can have a change that will have a positive perception. Plus, this will impact a positive way to use this knowledge for new people that may move in and educate local officials.

Forging solidarity is not a hard thing to do. You can always share your experience and to trust anyone that’s around you the situations that are happening around you.

 

How to be a Civic Agent

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When people see a huge problem that needs to be addressed, many people believe they have the right answer to mitigate the damage. Maybe using water to put out a huge forest fire. Possibly use that Neosporin when you scrape your knee on the ground. What would be your situation when dealing with racial justice in segregated communities across the country? Now this is a complicated questions that has many answers to it. Will it be the golden solution? Only time will tell with the help of various community leaders and government officials. There are many ways that individuals can imagine themselves as civic agents. One is to look up resources on racial equity and educating others in the process. Two is talking with others in your neighborhood/city to get a list of strategies that will work for everyone. The last one is to go back to the original plan and tweaking those suggestions on a regular basis.

There’s always a lot of resources for anyone looking to use racial equity within their local businesses or even neighborhoods. For Racial Justice, this is a bigger issue, as there’s a possibility of multiple times to meet and strategize ways in talking with one another from different racial backgrounds and geographical areas. If you use Minnesota Compass website (https://www.mncompass.org), you will find a lot of resources to use to promote education surrounding racial justice and to have healthy conversation.

Having a to-do list is great for when you go to a grocery store. In the context of racial justice, there can be many things that’s needed to be addressed but also explaining through each one at a time. Once you gather a group of people that want to address about racial justice, you can have a civil conversation about the things that are needed to be changed and how to go about it. One important step is to invite a city council person or even a local community member that everyone knows and feels comfortable around. Once you have your list down, you can focus on the first three and go down the list as each one is completed.

Tweaking those original plans are all a part of the process of making things a more equitable community. For racial justice, there will always be a need to talk with new people that come into the neighborhood and bring everyone together about issues that are working or new issues that are popping up and needs to resolved as quickly as possible.

Although this is not an infinitive list to follow, these are some examples that you can use to make everyone accountable and become civic agents.

How do we Imagine the Process of Change?

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When someone discovers a law that’s unfair and/or discriminatory, many people want to see to change immediately within 5 seconds. Unfortunately, change comes at a slow pace with talking with our local leaders and having votes shot down until the process has succeeded and change is made. Changes with racial justice is a different animal. This involves a different racial background. A commitment to change the process of how they treat people, talk to people and even believe their stories. The process of change within racial justice will have a list of skills and resources that can be used and followed.

A huge skill that can process change for racial justice is simple: Talking. Have a conversation. There are so many missed opportunities for law enforcement to have simple conversations to people that live in the city or even the neighborhoods to improve their relationships regarding crime and leadership. Ever since the murder of George Floyd, there was an investigation that came out that the most of the officers within the Minneapolis Police Department don’t even live within the city limits. A lot of the officers live out in the suburbs. Even some live out as far as western Wisconsin or even in St. Cloud. There is missed opportunities and disservice for these officers to not connect with the local people. I feel that these officers just come into the city to do a job for “X” hours and drive home to their quiet homes out of harms way.

If you are new to figuring out how to provide resources to others on racial justice or to even have resources of your own, you’ve come to the right. There are a lot of websites right now that have documents of information on how to break down the walls and making issues more equitable and diverse. One example would be the resources for the ACLU’s (https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice) website. Under the headline “What’s at Stake”, the section states “Deep-seated systemic racism and inequities that disadvantaged communities of color are still woven into the fabric of our institutions today— from education and housing to our criminal legal system.” The ACLU and others websites are a start to educate others and look at additional education that’s out there to learn going into the future.

This is only the start of collecting the resources and showing you the skills in how to combat racial justice and voicing change within the area you live in.

How do we Imagine a better world?

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A better world is out there, but how do we achieve it? That’s a central question that should have a simple answer. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple to have a plan that everyone will follow and laws will be simply followed. Ever since the founding of the U.S.A., there are a list of laws that people follow. There were even laws that discriminated against someone’s race and even sexual orientation. Over the last few hundred years, many people and officials have overturned and started to make those laws more equitable for everyone to live. Yet, there’s still some work to do. Racial Justice involves many layers that federal, state and local officials must recognize not right and talk with the citizens to move forward for law enforcement to be accountable.

Black and other persons of color in America are currently fighting for accountability among law enforcement officers when they shoot and kill an innocent person. When someone is complying at a traffic stop and deliberately harass them. Even when a person is innocent of the crimes and the law still tries to charge them for something to hold them back of their goals. Black Americans in major metro cities want police reform and to “defund” the current budget from their cities law enforcement budget. Now, when people say they want their local police department to be “defunded”, it doesn’t mean that the department will have little money to operate. Many people want to use those funds to assist with things police are not trained with and certified. If a major city’s police department has a budget of about $150 million dollars, maybe the city wants $50 million dollars of that to be used toward social services to assist people in difficult situation or to have social workers to come out to people who may be homeless or dealing with a mental health crisis.

Another point is the justice for the individuals that are dying in the hands of law enforcement and walking away scot free. In many of the cases that involve law enforcement and a regular citizen, once the investigations are over, the police chief or Attorney General for the state will say that the officers action were justified in the acts they were carrying out. What are we fighting for? Accountability. Justice. Answers. Many people are tired of public entities of holding back information and talking to the public about the problems of the community.

Now, I know that a better world is coming and there will be huge changes coming to the way investigations are handled and dealt with. In the next posting, I will share some resources on how to address and how I would deal with it.