What happens when East Ramapo alumni reunite and work together?
I believe that magic happens. When one of us needs help, we stop what we are doing and we take the time to listen. We remind each other that we are here for one another. And then we do what we can to help. This is the simple model of The Give Back Experience.
We remember where we came from with a sense of pride, love and gratitude. In a nanosecond, we remember our strong friendships and in many cases, lifetime bonds. When we look at photos from our childhood, we remember how special it was. We smile, we laugh, we reminisce. Most special of all, we remember. We remember so much because these are the years that shaped us. We are the people we are today largely because of our childhood experiences.
I believe in us. Although every generation may look back on their childhood, I believe that East Ramapo, in the 80s and 90s, gave us more than just nostalgia and memories. I believe the multiethnic and multicultural community that we grew up in gave us specific values, life experience and blueprints for how diverse groups of people can effectively and beautifully work together.
Diversity was all we knew – our friend groups were racially, culturally, economically, religiously, and beautifully diverse. Think about your class pictures. Even better, if you still have them, take them out. LOOK at the diversity in the picture. This is just how it was. Every shade of brown is reflected. Spring Valley was a landing place for so many different people. We were not the wealthiest district but we were rich in humanity.
I believe we can create change. We competed in and out of the classroom with the best and brightest. And we can do this again. We had opportunities to be scholar athletes and musicians. We had opportunities to be involved in a long list of extracurricular activities and students groups. And we thrived. Best of all, we had an administrators, teachers and coaches who cared about us.
I believe now, more than ever, that we have a moral obligation to give back.
One of the cool things I get to do is draw from my experiences both as a Community Organizer and as a Project Lead. A key component of any project is Balance: Dreaming and doing. Feeling and thinking. Planning and risk-taking. Science and art. Linear and spatial. Finance and Dance. Offense and Defense. Moving forward and looking back.
It’s important that I learn as I go. To look at what I could have done differently and give myself grace for not knowing all the answers, not being able to explain things clearly at first but doing things anyway. Moving forward anyway. Trying anyway. Giving myself a second chance anyway.
What I know is that what happened in Month 1 was special. Magical. I have heard from so many friends, near and far, old and new, and everyone in between. We work in different sectors, have families, and have so many strengths. We work in Finance, Operations, Media, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, Fine and Performing Art, Healthcare, Education, Government, Corporate and Non-profit. We are originally linked by a powerful Force for Change: Friendship.
I intend to leverage everything I can to keep things going and balance all the beautiful things at play. As I said to one friend…people are in scoring position. It’s time to drive them home.
May we always remember the lessons learned in Month 1:
If you don’t allow yourself to DREAM BIG FIRST, you’ll never know what you want.
If you worry and focus on THE HOW before you’ve let yourself dream of THE WHAT, you will give up too early.
if you don’t invest up front in exploring and articulating THE WHY, your project will run out of gas.
If you don’t love THE WHO, your project will have no meaning.
If you don’t BELIEVE, you’ll never know that dreams do come true.
As the late John Lewis wrote “If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to to do something about it.”
That’s just it. We are giving back because it is our moral obligation to do so. This is the spirit that drives The Give Back Experience. It really is that simple. xoxo
The madness of COVID: Being in NYC, having the boundary between my home and my workplace robbed from me, watching my beloved New York City and all its wonder shut down, having a place in our apartment called “Quarantine” for canned goods and perishable foods cuz we just didn’t know what was happening in those first two weeks, having an area of our apt called “Target” for our more-than-one-shelf-supply of masks, gloves, disinfectant, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, paper towels, Swiffers, Kleenex, and other household items.The only time I actually knew what time it was was when I heard the roars, cheers, and clapping at 7pm from my neighbors. And that was just March and April.
I had a strong start in May. The weather was getting warmer. I was running regularly. I had 1.5 months of stay at home behaviors under my belt. I discovered that I can spend hours outside chalking on a free and spacious canvas called my sidewalk. All the years I spent doodling in in high school and in the workplace [instead of taking notes] paid off. Not only can I draw a really good R2D2, I could also draw BB8 and even C3PO. Not only that, the famous person who happens to be my neighbor would post my drawings on her Instagram and I would have a few hours of social media fame where admittedly, my “delight” meter inside increased with every “like.” Ask Karen, when I saw the post on my IG feed, I ran to her and yelled, “HB I’m famous!” (She was in the bathroom…ooops).
I planned a staycation during Memorial Day week. The time off was just 2 weeks away. I would wander around my new NYC, walk a commuter-less Brooklyn Bridge, take pictures everywhere, stare at the early morning light, stare at shapes, lines, and shadows, I would be still and breathe in Spring. I would sit in Brooklyn Bridge Park, stare for hours at Lower Manhattan, my favorite view of the city, I would eat pizza at every piece place in DUMBO. I would ride my bicycle from my house to wherever I wanted to go. I would run regularly. I would write. I would do many things to center and prepare myself to do everything from home during the summer. I would celebrate a Life-Changing Milestone. I would get my 1 year coin and maybe even be the speaker at a meeting. I would finally rest and decompress from the madness of COVID.
And then on May 25, 2020, a police officer murdered a Black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis.
I notice some writers use the word “death” or “died” when they talk about “what happened” to George Floyd. Yes, this person died and I can leave it at that. But I refuse to because I don’t trust people who don’t let themselves feel the truth. George Floyd was murdered.
What happened in the days and weeks after George Floyd’s murder (I’m going to keep saying it until people really feel it), was life changing. The pain and anguish that I felt in the weeks following the murder spilled out of my heart and my mind. I finally started to write again. After all these years. I wrote freely, no thinking, no stopping, no getting stuck on a word, a sentence or a paragraph.
Instead, I wrote through my pain, my fear for this world, my worry for my Black friends – are they sleeping? Are they eating? Are they crying? Are they hurting? Do they know how much they are loved? Are they able to protect their children from this world? Does Nia know what it is happening? Is Tre okay? Yes, my dear, childhood friends from Spring Valley, NY of course I was thinking of you.
On June 1-2, I was struggling to focus at work. Unfortunately, I work with a lot of human-robots and the culture is such that the subject of George Floyd was AVOIDED at the exact moment that I needed To Be Seen. As such, I went into triage mode and did everything I needed to do to take care of myself. This came from years of training and it was time to turn everything I learned into action.
I reached out for help. I reached out to anyone who would respond. I needed to be acknowledged and seen. It’s the basic human need. It’s Ground Zero for me. To ask for help and to receive it. To be seen is the first step to feeling safe.
It is not a coincidence that the person who had the most impact on June 2nd and the weeks after is a seasoned teacher. Their instinct is to, in an instant, help. It’s what they do. Thank you, Stacey, for also diving in. A Facebook message on June 2nd…a sewing machine…”Have your ever written a play?”, a reading on Google Meetup, TP, a logo, a song, a road trip, a Timeline, a Believer, a Creative Spirit, a friendship I now adore.
I was not OK on June 2nd. I couldn’t breathe. I was scared. I felt like my brain was on fire. I felt the world around me exploding. I saw images of people in city after city after city expressing what I know is decades of systemic and socially constructed trauma. Many people saw riots. I saw pain. Many people saw looting. I saw desperation. Many people saw fires. I saw cries for help.
So, on June 3rd, I got to work. I wrote. I wrote until I figured out what I wanted to do: Inspire, create and sustain change at a larger scale than just my circle of friends. I wanted and needed it to be bigger.
It’s been a work in progress but every week, I nurture it. In the early mornings and the quiet evenings after work, I sneak in an hour or two to write. I go places I don’t want to go. I feel things I don’t want to feel. During the weekends, I have a longer stretch to do things. If anyone is wondering how I am doing this, that’s how. It’s called doing the work that needs to be done.
The Give Back Experience has largely existed solely on Facebook,Instagram, and in private messages and calls, with our small but powerful network of friends. This week, we are preparing the runway to do further outreach and expand our efforts wider and deeper. The 501(c)(3) process unfortunately takes months not weeks so we’ve had to operate within that reality. But I was told to be patient, do the work, build the base first, don’t wait, go, do, articulate your mission, and most of all stay true to yourself: Believe
We are only getting started. We haven’t used our best weapons yet. We haven’t made the big asks yet. We are not operating at full capacity…on purpose. We are pacing ourselves. We are taking care of ourselves. We are allowing us to figure this out. We are here for each other. We are practicing. And we are getting stronger every day.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead
It begins something like this. I have an idea. It’s an old idea really, instilled in me at a very early age. It’s simply to give back. To whom exactly? Everyone and anyone with whom I connected in one way, shape or form. That’s really it.
Now, I could talk myself into thinking that’s too broad, too big, too much. But that’s a trap I really don’t want to fall for this time. I want to try this time and I want to go further than that.
I want to do it.
Are people interested in helping me? Are people willing to give? Are people committed to creating change? The answer is a resounding yes. Thanks to an amazing, smart group of friends, I am receiving the kind of advice I need to build a smart, sustainable and impactful force for change. This is my dream and largely because of your support, it’s going to come true.
