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I have an inherent belief that the more we take care of the people in our community, the better our economy and our society will be.
Liz Baxter
North Sound Accountable
Community of Health
This pandemic demonstrates our interconnectedness. The racially disproportionate incidence of chronic diseases are reflections of our inequity. They’re reflections of an inequitable education system, an inequitable housing system, an inequitable employment and job and wage structure that consigns those people to lesser jobs, inadequate food, inadequate recreation, polluted environments, and produces the comorbidities that, theoretically epidemiologists say that they can control for to explain disproportionate incidence of disease and death among African Americans. However, it is a structural inequality that produces those, and that is what’s needed to change.
DAYNA BOWEN MATTHEWS
University of Virginia School of Law & Medical School
For a lot of young people, it’s an opportunity to change their perspective. I’m really looking forward to the next generation not necessarily being comfortable with what’s been the status quo.
LOUISA MANCEY
WE in the world
If we make sure Indigenous people aren’t an afterthought and people see Indigenous people as value added as a collaborator for change. There’s a huge opportunity. But it requires us to recalibrate how we think about innovation. And quite frankly, how we think about capitalism altogether. And it requires us to push our learning edge. Let’s create policies that prioritize community wealth building strategies instead of just creating tax incentives for the large corporate industries who aren’t going to be the ones deploying these ideas.
NICK TILSEN
NDN Collective
You can’t rely on waiting for the crisis to hit and then expect all these players in the community to come to your aid. We’ve been doing this work for a long time, recognizing the value of relationships over a very long period of time, and have really worked to develop those and find ways that we can come together to study needs together and address needs together.
PAULA MORGEN
ThedaCare
We are looking at the trauma of the entire family unit, not only the trauma involved with the person, but understanding the concept of intergenerational trauma that gets passed on from person to person. If we don’t break that cycle now, we are going to have another generation of people set up for substance use in some form or another, and for mental health disorders.
MICHAEL BRUMAGE
West Virginia University
It became very clear that the community
IMRAN ANDRABI
stepped up and stayed home from a health and
well-being perspective, not only for themselves,
but for each other, and truly took that to heart.
ThedaCare
You can look around as a leader and you can say, well, this is my piece, and this is what I’m going to contribute. But I also have all of these other formal leaders, emerging leaders—whoever—they’re going to come to the table, and this is what they’re going to do. That’s how we can mobilize things very fast. If COVID-19 happened 10 years ago, we would never have had that culture of collaboration built in order to mobilize that fast.
TEAL VANLANEN
Algoma School DIstrict
We live in a democracy but in order to make the democracy better, we have to understand and appreciate the fact that we all have rights and we all have responsibilities. If we’re going to make the neighborhood better, a better place to live for all of us, then we acknowledge each other’s rights, but we also accept the responsibility to make sure that our neighbor is taken care of.
COMMUNITY DIALOGUE
We want our political leaders, our national leaders,
COMMUNITY DIALOGUE
our corporate leaders, our education leaders, church
leaders—we want everybody to start honoring each other and listening to each other and caring for one another.
I would like us to recognize how the vast disparity in access to resources in our culture right now hurts all of us. We need to start striving toward a cooperative society instead of a competitive one.
COMMUNITY DIALOGUE
We have lost focus on the fact that there are other dangers that people encounter besides COVID-19. We are not doing a very good job of caring for those who are in abusive relationships, struggle with anxiety, depression, addiction, all of those kinds of things. Those people have really been left behind.
COMMUNITY DIALOGUE
We’ve adapted, and I think that’s part of resiliency,
COMMUNITY DIALOGUE
too. We’ve learned how to take things that have been thrown at us and try to make the best out of them.
If we can change things in our country so that people of different opinions and different politics can work together for the good of all of us, that would be the most important outcome to me.
COMMUNITY DIALOGUE
We can show others what is possible in our region. We can say, we’re going to make this big, bold move together collectively. That’s something that we need to do so that we don’t stay isolated, especially in times of this adversity.
NICK COCHART
Algoma School District
I just feel like going forward, we could use some of that money that’s going toward militarizing the police toward resources, such as food equity, domestic violence, resources keeping schools open, and educational resources that will help youth have a brighter future and sort of stay out of trouble and be productive members of society.
ZAYD MUHAMMAD
Proviso Partners for Health
I think there is something to be said for a society where we can air grievances in a way that we can have productive conversation.
KATIE MCCORMACK
WE in the World
How do you take these short-term policy practice changes we’ve seen— cities leasing hotel and motel space to house their homeless, to protect them against COVID-19—how do you make those things sustainable?
SUE POLIS
National League of Cities
When we remember that we need to gather ourselves in the spirit of the moment and the spirit of our ancestors, the spirit of all living things, and in the spirit of Mother Earth—then I think we have a real foundation for change.
DARRELL HILLAIRE
Children of the Setting sun productions