We Continue to Till, Rest Towards the Ideal Dawn
The Crossroads of Change
For the past 22 years, I've worked as a social change strategist and researcher, helping leaders navigate complex transitions. My goal is to support decision-makers, managers, and frontline staff in making strategic choices about culture, operations, and programming. I do this through a combination of emergent facilitation and mixed-method research. I believed my 10-year milestone at RC would be a culmination point. Instead, in just over 200 days, 60 years of civil, democratic, and environmental legal doctrines are being rolled back, reshaped by anti-republican, anti-immigrant, and anti-Black values.
The business models and overall economy of the public commons are changing in ways we don't fully understand yet, but we must be prepared to face these challenges together. We have to take care of our working-class, immigrant, and Black communities and families across the diaspora. Whatever the future holds, it's time to emerge from this fog. Looking back, I've struggled to articulate the difficult truths of the last six years, which often feel buried. To better understand our current moment and what an ideal future "dawn" could look like, I decided to revisit the past.
A Look Back at 2020
On November 2, 2020, on the eve of the election, I wrote in Cognoscenti: "If Democrats pull off a victory on November 3rd, they will need to boldly become the political party that centers on remembrance, truth and reconciliation of America's original sin — the legacy and culture of white supremacy. The multiple crises we are living through today have arisen from this avoidance; from our inability to grapple with the deepest and darkest truths of our past and present."
It's chilling to reread these words and recall the clarity I had in calling for a new generation of leadership. Ultimately, what transpired was more about performance than outcomes, public relations over genuine culture shift, and the preservation of old and new allegiances of power, corruption, and greed.
Progress and Pushback
Every step of progress, whether big or small, has been met with resistance and repression. This has been a slow and steady shrapnel moving through our digital and physical public spaces, and now it's accelerating at a rampant pace. While progress has been tangible, there's undeniable discomfort with the leadership and values of organizations and ecosystems rooted in Black, multiracial, multireligious, and gender-autonomous identities.
You can debate the extent, but America's conservative and paramilitary movements, along with their global allies, are actively dismantling social contracts and the economy. From Gaza to Sudan, a broken moral code is profiting from the loss of life, theft of land, and destruction of cultural heritage. Federal, state, and local policies are being rewired to be rooted in principles of anti-science, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, white nationalism, and anti-humanitarianism.
The Path Forward
Our future, and what this "ideal dawn" will be, still depends on an intergenerational body of leaders who understand that deep listening and empathy are core tenets of living in a multiracial country. The road ahead will be harder, but how do we continue to dream? What are the guiding stars and constellations that will hold, care for, and resource us? This is the commitment and service that cultural alchemy will continue to provide.