From Dr. John Johnson, vice president for diversity and inclusion:
Welcome to 2023. As we turn the page on the calendar year, we often reflect on the past with Best of and Top Ten lists that remind us of the passing year’s highlights. We might also revisit our struggles and lessons from the previous year and resolve to do better. We articulate explicit commitments to do things differently and take intentional action to make the next year better than the last. We say we’re going to eat healthier, exercise more, finish that project we started. Because we know if we continue to do what we’ve always done, we will continue to get what we’ve always gotten.
As we come into 2023, it feels like we are moving further and further away from the events of 2020 that rocked our nation and challenged us to create the communities we want to live in and see in the world. In that ripe moment, rich with collective trauma and pain, all of us reeling from the sting of witnessing essentially the equivalent of a public lynching, it seemed like so many of us had a battery placed in our backs and were activated to effect long overdue change. Those batteries appear to be draining as time passes. While some of us are experiencing battle fatigue and exhaustion, others may be shielded from the continuing urgency of the circumstances and imagining an achieved victory or sense of accomplishment. But just because we look away, the social misery and harm experienced by so many marginalized communities does not cease.
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