DI V E RSIT Y, EQUIT Y AND INC LUS IO N
Winter 2021
Good Trouble
In early September, St. Stephen’s Director of Equity and Inclusion Yvonne Adams spoke to school members in morning Chapel about many of the issues we have faced during this remarkable time in our shared history. Our campus community was so moved by her address that we wanted to share excerpts with our readers. I want to begin today with a question: When you hear the phrase “good trouble,” what does it mean to you? I want you to think about that as we share our time together today. So like many of you, I’ve been struggling to deal with the inundation of information throughout the last few months. From COVID-19, racial protests, voting and hurricane season to sports teams refusing to entertain the world while men die in the streets, and marginalized folks being pushed further and further to the margins. It feels endless; it feels defeating, sometimes daunting. I'll be honest. I am staggering under the weight of the American history that we are living right now—the empowerment of white supremacy, the expressed public devaluation of black and brown people in this country, the isolation of pandemic quarantine…. The attempted lynching of Jacob Blake ended a summer that began with the lynching of George Floyd. Combined with COVID, this has cast a pall across my thoughts that I cannot seem to crawl out from under. I have to wonder: What chaos are we leaving for our children to rectify if we do not, in this moment, look in the mirror and acknowledge both our shared humanity and the necessity to live on this planet together? While I’ve pressed on to create some modicum of routine and purpose for this season we are in, it has been especially challenging because I have not been in community with my St. Stephen’s family. As I have begun to see many of you on the screen or physically distant at various places around Austin, I am shifting into a more hopeful view. This is an amazing time to be alive, an inspiring time. I spoke at a protest in early May about the two pandemics we are dealing with and how we are clearly living in a time when we are discussing the risk of life in order to have the joy of life. I always said when I was younger, when I became aware of American history, that there was a part of me that wished I had lived through the civil rights movement, because I know that I would have been out there marching and preaching in the streets. Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 when I learned about his murder. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. A particularly low moment for me this past summer was during a time of mourning for the great John Lewis, one of the greatest civil rights activists of all time. As most of us know, he died in July after a long battle with cancer. A steadfast civil rights activist, a political figure with a conscience, a warrior for justice … a great man. Rep. John Lewis devoted his life to racial justice and equality. He was an orator unlike any other, and his words galvanized action among multiple generations. Though he has died, his words give me a new perspective.
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St. Stephen’s Episcopal School