By Rachel Clemons, Project & Operations Lead

Dear Reader –– I assume I speak accurately for you too, when I say that 2020 has been a wild ride. This absolutely moonstruck year has featured a global pandemic, an economic recession, exhausting politics, massive social unrest, too many Zoom meetings, and orange, smoke-filled skies. People have lost their loved ones, homes, jobs, and livelihoods. It’s been rife with fear and isolation.

We have worked together to rebuild and retrofit almost every aspect of our lives. And we’ve had to ask ourselves some difficult questions along the way. What is essential for our society? How do we protect our most vulnerable citizens? How do we continue to work, to learn, to play, to live our lives, in a system that feels like a hamster wheel of aloneness? This is a difficult time with no determinate end.

Yet I’ve also seen myriad moments when we’ve risen gracefully to the challenge of connecting with one another, despite isolation. We’ve faced confinement with collective hope and positivity. We’ve checked in on our neighbors, queued up in evenly-spaced lines outside the grocery store, and helped our children navigate online schooling. Perhaps we’ve taken advantage of all this time on our hands––to pause, rest, reflect, dream, or wonder; to reevaluate our lives and what’s truly important. To spend more time in nature, or at home with family, close friends, or roommates. There’s been some beauty in this collective struggle.

Anxiety, aloneness, frustration, inspiration, hope. I know you, at one point or another, have felt all of these feelings, Reader. I feel them, too.

At this point, you might be thinking: “Hold up. I thought this was about diversity, equity, and inclusion? Why are we talking about all of these feelings? Just get on with it.” Well, as my mother would say, just hold your horses.

In my experience with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), it’s pretty much been all about feelings. My first job out of college was on an urban farm in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was a place where people came to learn, to grow food, and to be in community. For some, it was a place to re-imagine their neighborhoods and local food systems. Like many formerly-industrial American cities, Bridgeport’s poverty rate is significantly higher than the national average. Many residents don’t have grocery stores in their neighborhood and don’t have cars to drive there. Access to fresh produce and whole foods is a sincere challenge for the city, and the farm I worked on existed to address that. It seemed simple enough: grow food where food is needed, and people will be better off. But I learned there are so many other factors at play.

By virtue of living in a city with more cultural and racial diversity than I’d ever experienced, I began to view the world differently. I thought more critically about how racism, classism, and xenophobia affect all aspects of our lives. Where we live, the food we eat, the quality of our schools, and––as I think about a lot these days––our relationship with nature. We don’t all get dealt the same cards. And while we can implement solutions that address the effects of historical oppression, getting to the root of the problem is more important.

As a person who has faced few barriers in life, I navigated feelings of confusion, defensiveness, and even guilt for my part in an unfair system. At times, it was emotionally taxing and unpleasant, which I, like most of us, am accustomed to avoiding. But it helped me realize an important truth: that building collective trust and bridging cultural divides are necessary to make the world better. The wrongs of history won’t right themselves––it takes time, intention, and effort. My experience planted within me a strong conviction to infuse principles of equality and justice into all that I do, including my work at Grassroots Ecology.

I say all of this to illustrate that even though they’re often uncomfortable, strong emotions and shared vulnerability can open us up to incredible things. We’re witnessing it now, on a much larger scale. The existential contemplation of 2020 has set the stage for a powerful resurgence of a national conversation on race in America. The death of George Floyd, inexcusable and tragic like the deaths of so many other Black people at the hands of police, sparked an unprecedented level of energy and outrage. Across almost every city, over the course of nearly four months, an estimated 15 to 26 million people participated in demonstrations, making it the largest in United States history. My hometown of Louisville, Kentucky has seen over 100 consecutive days of protests, seeking justice for the police shooting of Breonna Taylor. My children will read about this time in their history books.

White people, in particular, have shown up and spoken out in unprecedented numbers. It’s worth noting here that Black Lives Matter has been around since 2013, and that People of Color, as well as a smattering of White folks, have been fighting this fight for a long, long time. But something about 2020 has just hit differently.

In June, the New York Times nonfiction best seller list included books like White Fragility, How to be an Antiracist, Me and White Supremacy, and The New Jim Crow––a pretty radical shift for mainstream America. Code Switch, a popular podcast featuring conversations about race and inequality, likened its own sudden uptick in listeners to the gym on New Year’s Day. A dizzying rush of statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement came from schools, non-profits, companies, governments, and individuals alike. From us at Grassroots Ecology, too. To me, it was inspiring to see so many people and institutions rally behind a shared sentiment. At the same time, it also felt perfunctory because I knew much of it arose, at least in part, from pressures to see and be seen. I wondered, and still wonder, how long it will last.

All of it begs the question: why now, White America? What makes this moment different? Yes, the video was horrific, and the brutality is stark, but many other cases in modern history have had a similar set of facts. Six years ago in New York City, Eric Garner repeated the same last words, “I can’t breathe,” eleven times while being arrested, and ultimately killed, by police.

Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020, led by Tha Hood Squad through East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park.

Perhaps George Floyd’s murder was merely a spark that ignited a huge pile of kindling, gradually collected over the last several years. My hypothesis is that the COVID pandemic shook the snow globe of routine, stability, and safety enough to highlight new priorities and cultivate empathy for those facing mortal danger in America. I would argue that the difficulty and intense vulnerability of this year is precisely the reason for this extraordinary cultural shift.

Nonetheless, what matters more is where we go from here. I’d be disappointed to see this rare spike in momentum end with 2020. Either way, the racial justice movement––especially its newly annexed crowd of White folks––will have a lot to navigate in the coming months and years. What does it mean to be an ally? To recognize your privilege? What does it look like to take part in building a more just society? In other words, we have a lot of feelings to process together.

As a community-focused and predominately White institution, Grassroots Ecology has been wrestling with these questions for the past couple of years. First through casual talks with coworkers as we watered plants and pulled up weeds. Then through more intentional conversations with our whole team. We’ve begun to think about how we can help make the environmental and outdoor community better, stronger, and more inclusive. How our work can not only change landscapes, but also hearts and minds. We’ve begun to internalize that the healing powers of nature simply aren’t within the grasp of many people in our world, or even in our own neighborhoods. And that injustice anywhere, of any kind, is a detriment to protecting our planet.

We’ve opened our eyes to see that equity, inclusion, and justice are not tangentially related to our work––they are front and center. It’s certainly a shift in perspective, but I speak genuinely when I say I’m proud of our efforts so far. We’ve adopted an official DEI statement, identified DEI as a major focus area for our three-year strategic plan, and most importantly, made time to talk openly about these important issues. As our friends, neighbors, volunteers, and supporters, we hope you’ll join us in that ongoing conversation.

There’s a lot to say about this topic, Reader. That’s why I’m going to keep writing about it. Next time, I’ll share some reflections on what the journey toward diversity, equity, and inclusion has been like for us at Grassroots Ecology, and where we hope to go from here.

From the Field

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - Why Now?