If you’re new to anti-racism work, new to this battle, then you might be wondering: Why isn’t more being accomplished? Where are the results? It’s been more than half a year, why aren’t our collective efforts being rewarded?!

The truth is, this work takes time. You can’t free the ocean of all of its pollution in a month, and Anti-Racism work doesn’t produce immediate results, either, unfortunately. You may never personally witness the results of the work we are doing today.

Rapid change isn’t the way of human life. But the good news is, it seems that collective action and anti-racism work is becoming the new way; the new normal.

South of the Border, in the United States, we’re about to see someone who is Black, Indian, and Female be inaugurated as Vice-President – a first on all three accounts. It’s a historical moment, there’s no question about that. It took many, many years – decades – of fighting just to get women into senior positions in business, let alone to help run the country (visually, at least – women have been helping to keep things afloat behind the scenes since the beginning of time). It’s going to take much longer than that to fight back and win against a system designed to keep Black People and People of Colour down.

But, according to The Atlantic, the protests that followed the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClian, and Ahmaud Arbrey (sadly, just to name a few), may have been the largest movement in American history, with more than 23 million people marching to end police brutality – not counting the rest of the Earth’s citizens who marched around the world, including here in Ottawa and across Canada. And throughout the States, we are starting to see some progress results taking shape; these are just a few examples:

• Cities across that country are cutting funding to police departments and redirecting them towards social services
• A total of 62 of the largest 100 cities now have policies against use of chokeholds by law enforcement
• Louisville, Kentucky has passed Breonna’s Law, banning no-knock warrants
• Monuments honouring enslavers, Confederate leaders and colonizers are being removed
• NASCAR has banned the Confederate Flag from being flown at their races
• Sports leagues are reversing course and now support their athletes in protest

We are nowhere near the end of this work, but maybe this time, we will continue to do the work together, and continue to take steps in the right direction.

It’s going to take a lot of patience, a lot of grit, and a lot of time to make it happen, but I believe we’re approaching the end of a very sad era in human history and entering the beginning of a new consciousness. This new way of being starts now – we just have to keep working.