Can one person change the world
[Music]
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