Can one person change the world

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one horrible thing about covet 19

is how helpless it can make you feel

it’s this invisible enemy

impacting the entire world and the

solution seems so

complicated yet we all tried to help

think about it when lockdown hit

what did you do some of us went and got

groceries for elderly neighbors

we checked in with loved ones gave more

to charities

upended our social lives so that we

could socially distance

across toronto we saw tremendous

examples

of sacrifice and solidarity but the

truth is

some folks sacrificed more than others

front-line workers the elderly

low-income workers

black indigenous and racialized

residents

as the saying goes we were in the same

storm

but we certainly were not in the same

boat

covid 19 has helped us to see how truly

unequal our society has become

it has many of you asking okay well how

can i as an individual

help us to build back better these

social issues which were

you know maybe not clear before but i

see so clearly now

how can i help make a change i’ve spent

most of my adult life

thinking about social change as a

student activist

as a researcher as the founder of a

charity

and today in my work advising major

institutions

and as i’ve thought about it i think i

have an answer to that question

what can i as an individual do to help

change society

and the answer is this nothing

there is nothing you as an individual

can do

to change society you know retweeting

statements

self-educating yourself becoming an

ethical consumer

these are all good things but history

has shown

that well-meaning isolated individual

actions

do not change how society functions

the only thing that changes society is

when

individuals come together as communities

and those communities

contest and transform power relations

so let me back up what do i mean by that

when i say communities i mean it in the

broadest sense

groups of friends neighborhood

associations workplaces

faith groups those are all communities

and when i’m talking about power i mean

social power

the ability to determine how money is

spent how resources are allocated

to write and rewrite laws and

regulations

myself i learned about the power of

communities to transform society

back in 2005. i was a student at the

university of toronto

and president of the black students

association that year 2005

was the year of the gun and it was this

horrible time

where every day you’d open up the paper

and look at it and it seemed like

one after the another faces of young

black men

and women who’d lost their lives to gun

violence

and on top of it there was this toxic

rhetoric in the media

talking about black youth like this

foreign species who had invaded toronto

with gangs and violence i wanted to do

something

but on my own i just didn’t know how

so i reached out to other student

leaders and we created an advocacy

coalition

and we launched a campaign called bling

bring love in not guns and we had a very

simple message with bling

the answer to what was happening in the

city was not more police and not more

jails

but real investments in youth creating

job opportunities

ending systemic racism and black youth

were not the problem

but the answer we needed a seat at the

table

and help determining the response we

ended up taking that message to anyone

who’d listen

we did high school outreach we did

events we sat down with politicians

we took the message all the way to

parliament hill where i got to present

it for then prime minister

paul martin i learned from that

the fact that a small community there

was just 10 of us meeting

every night could impact thousands and

shift a national conversation

but why is it why is it that communities

can achieve things no individual can

i gotta say it’s not just about the

power of numbers

the fact is communities provide us with

psychological safety

we’re braver together

now after being i got to travel all over

the world and connect with different

activists

whether it was township organizers in

cape town south africa

or climate change organizers in london

england or

everyday heroes here in toronto

one of those heroes was a man named jim

kirkwood

now unfortunately jim recently passed

he was a united church minister retired

i met him when he was in his 80s

and you could still see jim up to the

last few months of his life

with his walker going to rallies and

protests

fighting the good fight i connected with

jim

because my phd thesis looked at the

canadian role

in the global movement to end apartheid

in south africa

and i remember one night i was talking

to jim and he said to me he said

kofi when we started this work in the

1970s

it was hard it was difficult most people

still saw nelson mandela

as a terrorist the south african

government

to many was seen as a cold war ally on

my own

i would have given up i couldn’t have

kept going but he said

kofi hope lives in community

and so what i had to do is find folks

who shared

my values grab them hold them close

and for 20 years we gave each other the

strength to continue on

and you look at the history in the 1970s

hundreds of canadians like jim began to

organize around this cause

and slowly try to change public opinion

they were so successful that by the

1980s

you could get 10 000 people marching on

queen’s park in toronto

chanting free mandela while at the same

time

real action was happening in this

country about sanctions

but as i said we have to remember the

actions of communities

only change society when they shift

power

when that money is spent differently

when the resources

are reallocated when those laws get

rewritten

that is the reason so many of us are

honestly

cynical about the statements we’ve heard

from major corporations

around the black lives matter movement

fact is even

fruit by the foot had a pro-blm

statement

and many of us are still asking okay

great but is power going to change

just like the nba players in the bubble

this summer

there came a point where they said well

are our group statements

and the slogans on the back of our

jerseys really accomplishing change

so should all of us who are doing

collective work

look critically at our actions and say

is this truly

impacting power

i learned about that founding a charity

called the sea center for young black

professionals

and i founded it with a woman named

shireen ashman

over the years c has helped hundreds of

youth

move from crisis to stability i still

have a letter in my drawer

from one of the first young people who

went through the program

and he wrote me years later talking

about how he was on a dark path in life

and going to see led to him going back

to school

getting a job getting married and buying

a home that he just purchased

charity work saves lives there’s no

denying that

but at the same time we saw at sea

for every young person we helped there

were hundreds more we didn’t have

capacity to reach

also we could help young people to be

the best workers possible

give them the skills give them the

self-confidence but if the economy was

not creating decent work for youth

if the job sites they were going to were

still sexist and racist

and stereotypical towards them then it

was not

enough charity work saves

lives but no charitable program

can fix a broken system

so what do we do well we elevated our

work

to start impacting power so today

a core part of what c does is work with

politicians

engage with social movements and sit

down with employers

to try to reform the system

but there’s one more thing i want to say

about power and that’s the fact

that power responds to pressure all

throughout history

the major social changes we’ve seen many

that are common sense today

happened because of pressure and those

with power resisted the change

think about it if we’re thinking about a

minimum wage for workers

or a publicly funded health care system

or ending support for a racist

government

in south africa all of those changes

were possible

because groups of everyday canadians

came together in communities

and they contested and shifted power on

the issues

so what does that mean well that means

sometimes to do this work

you have to get political and sometimes

there will be struggle and people with

power will push back you’ll upset people

but that my friends is what the late

congressman john lewis

called getting into good trouble but

good trouble is hard

and that’s why we have to do it together

so back to my original question how can

an

individual help us to build back better

from covid19

well if you’re feeling even slightly

inspired right now

i’d like you to dream with me for a

minute because there’s three things you

can do the first

you need to pick a cause right you need

to think about something you’d like to

see change

in society the second you need to find a

community

now you could go out and create your own

group but you’re already part of

communities

at this moment in time jim kirkwood who

i talked about

his community that he used was the

united church myself

and the activists from the bling

campaign it was the university of

toronto

neither of those organizations were

created

specifically to fight those causes but

they all had

money they had access to buildings and

they had deep

networks and with a little bit of

internal advocacy

those resources could be repurposed

towards the cause

that’s like the oldest trick in the

activist book

so i ask you think about it is there a

community where you could do that

then the third and final thing you want

to follow the advice of saul lelinski

here

you want to find an easy and early win

one simple victory where you can make a

small shift in power

but through achieving it you can build

up the confidence of your people

others will join in and then from there

the work will snowball

choose a cause find a community and

start with an

early and easy victory that my friends

is how individuals help us to build back

better

from kovid 19. but let’s be honest

right let’s be honest covet is not the

only

issue that’s going to test us climate

change

racism and xenophobia our insane

income inequality all of these issues

will continue to test us

but when we come together as communities

to transform

power we can impact and change all

of these issues my friends it’s possible

to raise out of the despair and anguish

of kovid through one change here

one change there with one thread and

another

weave a tapestry of a new society

a new social contract a new toronto a

new canada

that is more equitable more sustainable

and more resilient than what

came before we can do it my friends

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together

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you