The arc of justice bends because people are tugging at it.
A couple of weeks ago, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and several other leaders from the Atlanta community gathered at The Friends School for An Inter-generational Dialogue on Human Rights as part of the school’s 25th anniversary. I had the pleasure of visually mapping the candid conversation.
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The big question of the evening was how do you build a culture and a community that works for everyone? Mayor Reed made some powerful points when he spoke about the people who are being left behind—many of who grew up in poverty and didn’t receive a good education.
Poor people are needed to do well because we are facing external forces we haven’t had to deal with before, namely the growing nations of China and India. The US business model is no longer working because we can’t afford to carry that much wasted human potential.
Jerry Gonzalez, director of GALEO, an organization focused on Latino rights, made the point that half of the labor force in agriculture are undocumented workers. Our agricultural economy would collapse if we decided we didn’t want these workers.
Toward the end, they focused on the children and how we can help prepare them to deal with diversity by:
- Taking them to vote
- Learning a foreign language
- Understanding our place in the world
- Knowing that it’s okay to be different
- Being an ally for those in need
- And most importantly…be kind.