Speech
We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For
Speech excerpt from the Executive Directors of Color Institute Biennial Summit hosted by Black Resilience in Colorado Fund
I walked around the room before I walked in the room.
The building was a literal fish bowl, built of concrete and glass — mostly glass — and I could see people of all colors, shapes, sizes and abilities greet each other with warm hugs and handshakes.
My Uber dropped me off on one side of the massive fishbowl building. I walked around it slowly taking in the positive vibes of the people on the other side of the glass.
I inhaled as I opened the door, leaving the crisp, clean Colorado air outside for the warm welcome from my host.
The water in this fishbowl was absolutely perfect. I jumped in.
I was in Denver for the Executive Directors of Color Institute Biennial Summit hosted by the Black Resilience in Colorado (BRIC) Fund.
The Institute was founded about 12 years ago at the Denver Foundation and was moved to the BRIC Fund shortly after the murder of George Floyd. The purpose of the Institute is to provide training, development, and support for executive directors of color serving nonprofits in Central Colorado.
The purpose of BRIC is to organize philanthropic resources in a way that sustains solutions that fortify Black folks in Colorado.
This biennial Summit was critically important because it brought together funders, nonprofit leaders (including a few board members), and new executive directors in the current Institute cohort.
The workshops at the Summit were designed to help executive directors develop strategic and sustainable efforts that can take their organizations to the next level. Or, even better, to help them fulfill their missions altogether.
I was invited to attend and to serve as keynote speaker for their program luncheon by BRIC founder, LaDawn Sullivan. It was the honor of a lifetime.
Here is an brief excerpt of my speech titled We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For.
Loved Ones,
We were sent forth from the Ancients into unknown futures.
We were born on a distant continent and arrived in this nation in discontent.
Our humanity was shackled with unspeakable, malevolent mal-intent.
Our forebearers survived the unsurvivable and birthed us through the unbearable. Their paths were illuminated only by the glimmer in the unseen eyes of their descendants — us.
We are the product of whole persons who, for half a millennium, were reduced to two-thirds of their natural selves. It never added up.
We are the great summation of those that came before us.
Resilience is too meager a word to describe the enduring spirit of our ancestors.
It is no wonder we have spent years resisting the people, systems, and institutions that sought to strip us of our dignity; our humanity.
Our resistance was necessary to survive as a people; to protect our babies.
Our resistance was necessary for us to progress.
But, we are more than strugglers. We are more than the resistance that shaped our past and present identities.
We are enablers. Executive Directors are the bridge between known pain and aspiring hope; we are an activated vision with little time for excuses.
We are no one’s victim.
My prayer is that we lead our people and others with love, never shrinking into petty, reactive, and punitive nationalistic thinking about other races and ethnic groups.
These are limited mindsets.
Our freedom-fighting ancestors paid a heavy price for the moral authority we carry around the world. From Timbuktu to Denver to Birmingham, people of color have been the standard-bearers of what it means to create and preserve civil societies.
The world is ours. Let’s act like it.
Honestly,
Ed.
I am a poet, essayist, and civic strategist based in Birmingham, Alabama. Subscribe to my newsletter here. Learn more about the BRIC Fund here.
