We couldn’t let this moment pass.
That’s what we thought when we brainstormed ways to fix disparities caused by the pandemic.
Then George Floyd called out for his mother and our hearts broke — again — as we thought of all the other moments we had allowed to pass.
We met and we mourned and we talked.
We thought about racism and poverty in health care; we thought about school systems last on the spending list; we thought about mental health during forced isolation; we thought about food disparities; we thought about sustainability; we thought about women and minorities as first responders by virtue of their jobs; and we thought about justice in a world where wearing a mask for health could get a Black man arrested at a Wal-Mart.
We talked about headlines that caused fleeting moments of stress—and a never-ending heaviness — but no possibility for action: just bad thing after bad thing after bad thing.
We also thought about the things we loved, the things we’ve moved back to.
“All I ever wanted was to spend more time with my children,” Rachel said, as they played in a room near her workspace.
“I can hear my husband’s voice in his office next to mine,” said Kate, a dear friend of C&G. “It brings me comfort.”
“My team works better remotely than they ever did after a one-hour commute,” Evamarie said.
But how? How could we —how would we—take all of these broken pieces and all of the rediscovered good pieces and glue them back together in a way that was different? It had to be different.
It had to be stronger. Better.
“Kintsugi,” someone cried out during our first Zoom meeting. “The Japanese art of golden repair.”
In kintsugi, an artist repairs cracked pottery with gold to create something beautiful—often lovelier than the original.
To make that happen, we have to investigate the cracks to find the gold.
And we want to bring you with us. We want you to help us make it better.
The cracks, we realized, start at the personal level, and will continue to expose themselves as we move into a recession and we encounter a world that demands action against racism and we face the continued effects of climate change and we see the disparities caused by the wage gap.
But we don’t want to hit you with more headlines.
We want you to take action.
Every single story on this site will offer a “take action” piece. If we write about gardening as a way to avoid the gas used to transport vegetables, you’ll learn how to start seedlings in a milk jug.
If we write about how much harder people of color were hit by COVID 19, we’ll show you what you can do (yes, virtually, too) in your community to help.
If we write about a tornado in Kansas, we’ll provide a link for donations.
“Whatever we pull apart, we want to build in both sides,” Lisa said, as we brainstormed how to move past the book club, and past the social media post, and past that moment of grief for the day’s headlines.
We’re an earnest bunch, but you’ll also find dance parties, online birthday ideas, blogs about twisting hair and pictures of kittens.
(Take action: Adopt a cat.)
In the interest of transparency, we plan to be subversive.
We want you to vote, and if we have to move you to it by showing you how to apply for health insurance after a lay-off or how to cook a meatless Ethiopian meal on a Monday night, we’re there for it.
Check this out: Half of people who say they vote don’t.
But you know who does? People engaged with their communities.
So, as we tell you how to attract butterflies and how to build friendship groups with people who don’t necessarily come from the same place you come from and how to organize a get-out-the-vote campaign during a pandemic, we’ll also hit you with your local voting issues.
Your cracks, so to speak—the ones that need to be filled with gold.
We’ll focus on particular cracks: women and minority issues, sustainability, health, education, love for millennials, justice and disparities across public and private boards. So, you may see a vote tracker; you may learn about elections to decide whether you can garden in your front yard; and you may see a story about what communities are doing to improve policing. Each one will contain that “take action” piece.
(Wait. “Love for millennials”? Yeah, because we’re handing them a broken world, because they’ve been beat up for too long, because this recession will hit them hardest, and because they’re brilliant and have amazing ideas and could stand some mentoring and love right now. If you put yourself into that mentoring role, your own world will improve—trust us. Crack? Filled. Golden.)
You’ll see inspirational stories, quotes and photos—and by inspirational, we mean inspired to take action.
TAKE ACTION: We’d also like for you to write for us.
Tell us what you’re doing for your community—about how you’ve addressed food deserts or what happened when you learned when you applied for unemployment or how magical it was to deliver food during the pandemic.
Tell us your fears and your hopes. More importantly, tell us what’s happening at the local level to push some gold into those cracks.
With your help, we’re going to change the world.
Help us make something golden.