St Louis NAACP Education Lead Launches Literacy Initiative with Humility and Urgency.

I've made some mistakes and I've done some things that I'm not very proud of I too have blood on my hands I feel complicit that I have been part of a system that has underserved many of our children however there is always opportunity for us to keep plugging away to get it right for me there is this opportunity to remove some of the blood from my hands in the words of hip hop artist Gloria Hallelujah wordss known to some as glorilla every day the sun won't shine I guess that's why I love tomorrow family today is tomorrow and what we do moving forward matters we must have a sense of urgency the NAACP has created a table a tent upon which we can gather we do have again a sense of urgency and the NAACP wants to bring all of us to the table so we can be strategic and when I'm talking about strategic I'm talking about B rusting strategic if you know who by Rustin is you know that at one time he was called the most brilliant strategist in the entire world and so that's that's the kind of strategy that we need this work does not ignore the fact um as the poet gu says racism is not the shark it's the water and we fully understand that at the same time we have an obligation to leverage our agency and our Collective genius to thwart the reality if a system of inequity was created by humans it can be disrupted by humans and so in terms of the nuts and bolts of this work it really is rolling out in four phases phase one is what we call conversation with wives counsel because we can't attempt to know that we know the solutions without listening to the people who are most impacted and so for the last month I've had conversations with about 35 individuals and organizations to ask ask a couple of questions so we can have a very accurate landscape analysis and some of those questions are what is your theory of change that is what do you think is going to take to move the needle in literacy what should we start stop and or continue as individuals and as a collective what's missing where are the gaps what do you need as an individual and as an organization to broaden and deepen your impact what role should you can you will you play in this Collective movement and who else should we be talking to so that is phase one phase two this is the time for action and so this is when we Leverage The expertise of those strategic planners those strategic organizations in our region that can help us translate this work into real concrete action because we know that we had enough talking as I heard someone say it's time to stop singing and start swinging and so again we want to Leverage The expertise of one or more of the Region's most brilliant and impactful strategic planners action organizations and research organizations so we can bring multiple invested stakeholders to the table to move toward solution next step we will engage districts around these proposed Solutions and get by in our goal is to have a resolution adopted and signed by every school district in the region and that resolution is basically saying we are committed to this work and we're committed to a very specific goal around moving the needle for black and brown kids in our community and then finally we report our progress celebrate our successes in terms of both proficiency and growth and commit to continuous Improvement will this be perfect no after all we are public servants and not perfect servants so let's give each other some Grace at the same time let's all commit to doing what clarence's mama told him to do to hold space let's commit to standing in the gap for black and brown students who are being profoundly underserved by A system that some argue wasn't design for them anyway and so with that being said we are thank [Applause] [Music] with that being said that's to most that you'll hear me talking all night and so with that being said we want to bring up our brother where's kareim