Beloved community members,
Since our beginning, EVC has been a keeper of possibility, love, and critical hope.
Last week, the way our nation voted left us feeling punched in the gut. Like so many times during EVC’s 40 years, electoral politics are at odds with our work and our wellbeing. We feel anxious, uncertain, and scared.
But we’ve been here before. And we know this: sometimes the work happens through elected officials, but more often than not it happens through our own leadership, on the ground, in our communities and our neighborhoods. Time and again, EVC’s youth have reminded us that no one will do this for us. A loving, just, and equitable world will be the result of our ongoing struggle.
Even as we reeled from the election’s aftermath last week, our young people instinctively mobilized to care for each other—especially for those who are most vulnerable at this moment.
Our programs have only just started, yet the young people are already deeply bonding, due, in part, to EVC’s willingness to hold them through the intensity of this political moment. In one program last week, a youth producer courageously shared how he was recently forced to flee his homeland to seek asylum in the U.S. In the new political reality with a president-elect threatening mass deportations, this young person is now afraid of imprisonment and deportation. As tears streamed down his face, another young person, also a newcomer, rose and embraced the speaker. They held each other in a long embrace at the front of the class for all to see, modeling the care at the heart of EVC’s homeplace. They taught us how critical it is to hold each other in this perilous moment however we can—physically, emotionally, spiritually, and politically.
EVC will not let this be the end of the story—it is not even the beginning. It is, rather, a reminder that the work always continues, always moves steadily forward. As you can read from our recent blog post, “EVC Activism,” EVC has always worked inside of social justice movements to win the kind of change that outlasts the verisimilitudes of electoral politics.
Now, more than ever, we need you to gather your heart and your fire and join us.
Help us hold our young people, protect our homeplace, and ensure that EVC is around for many more generations to come.
In solidarity,
Ambreen Qureshi
Executive Director
Comentários