The Work Must Go On

Municipal Voice guest ask: “Will you keep fighting?”

Racial inequities persist throughout Connecticut despite being one of the more progressive states in the union. The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities began to address these inequities with the four CCM CARES regional panels held at the end of October.

The panelists filled up nearly four hours of conversation, but questions from legislators, community leaders, and the community would have taken several more hours. On an episode of the Municipal Voice, a co-production between CCM and WNHH FM, we brought on Archbishop Leroy Bailey Jr and Dr. Michael Bailey to continue that conversation and field some of the questions that the CCM CARES regional panels could not get to.

One of the questions directly related to progress. After carefully identifying the problems that cause racial inequities in this state, Both the Archbishop Bailey and Dr. Bailey said that it’s about leaders not being proactive in these endeavors.

“We ought to be out on the front lines,” Archbishop Bailey said, “We ought to be proactive, not reactive or inactive. Someone shouldn’t have to tell me the right thing to do. You know the right thing, you do the right thing.”

Moderates, in response to a famous section of Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” he said stand in the way and become a liability.

Dr. Bailey said that these moderates he would embrace with love, “go with empathy,” but say “really don’t sit there and be quiet.”

This was a frequent proposition throughout the conversation: one must be proactive in the pursuit of equity.

Both Baileys said that through their church community, they had devised a mentorship program because the teachers do not represent the student body in Hartford, with Dr. Bailey citing the line that it takes a village to raise a child, and part of this plan includes getting teachers from the city to stay into the city.

“They need to see people of color if they are of color,” Dr. Bailey said, “It’s easy to become another statistic.”

They need someone to “Just listen to their anxieties and their dreams,” the Archbishop added, “What they desire for themselves.”

He went so far as to ask that with Kamala Harris set to become Vice President, why hasn’t Connecticut had a Black Governor yet, alluding to limitations within the state leadership roles.

“We can do anything, we have the capability, we have the ingenuity,” he said, “Anything is possible, but you have to have the will, the wherewithal to do it, and someone to take the lead.”

CCM has been taking the lead in initiating many of these conversations throughout the state, looking to spur words into action. On December 3, as a continuation of these CCM CARES conversations, there will be a national panel of experts discussing local options to begin to solve the racial inequities in this state.

When asked whether or not they had hope for the future, both Archbishop Bailey and Dr. Bailey seemed hesitant to answer. Hope might have been the wrong word, and they’ve been down this path and through these struggles before.

Dr. Bailey said the questions of importance aren’t whether we hope that things will change.

“As history repeats itself,” he asks, “Will you keep fighting?”