National boredom was America’s wake up call to stand against racism but leaders of wealth are slow to act meaningfully — What will be their wake up call?

My teenager enters high-school in the fall and everyday they complain of boredom. When I was their age I did the same until I found a way to take meaningful action in my life. Meaningful action is the only helpful response to any pain, and systemic racism, like boredom, requires meaningful action.

I was 17 years old when I led my first protest by developing a network for people to distribute registry hacks to serve the millions of people banned from Napster, the controversial music sharing platform that predates Spotify by nearly a decade. My friends and I designed animated gifs for supporters to put on their site to show support for freedom of file distribution and link back to the movement. Thousands took up the call and many more thousands accessed the hacks we distributed so they could once again share music freely. I made the site because I was bored after being banned from Napster — previously downloading and listening to music kept me occupied and engaged as a teen. Likewise the people of America became bored when America went into Shelter-in-place lockdown.

Suddenly overnight we could no longer go shopping, or to Starbucks, or any of the things that kept us complacent with others suffering. At the same time those of us who were actively suffering had our livelihoods taken away, many furloughed over night and immediately stressed about how we would get groceries and medicine for ourselves and loved ones. And still, many others were suffering even more deeply, having already been unemployed and existing at the far margins of society, working for under the table wages, or no wages at all and relying entirely on the support of others to stay afloat on a meager existence. COVID19 locked us all in our homes, in other people’s homes, or outside in our homes and forced us to socially distance creating more pain of isolation. In pain we watched our government print trillions of dollars overnight and give more than half of it to the government itself and big businesses, while dropping some of the poorest who were on paper to qualify a meager stimulus check. I call it Trump change. Not enough money to make a difference in your life or raise anyone out of poverty. But corporations with high paid workers got PPP, a forgivable loan and paycheck protection program so they could use tax dollars to fund paychecks for the workers they decided to keep. Some companies like Shake Shack got that loan even though their business wasn’t struggling due to COVID19. At the same time more and more videos were being released displaying brutal murders of black people at the hands of police and racist whites — George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and far too many others. America was faced with the ultimate question without anything to distract it from its pain: What do you stand for?

One by one, city by city, state by state, and eventually country by country, the majority of people stood up and announced they would no longer stand by while structural racism created by the institutions of European colonialism and American chattel slavery continued. People standing became people marching in protest in a global movement for the most marginalized people in the world- Black people. Slowly wealthy leaders saw the signal that it was time to change before the poor of the world became so united with rage that we would eventually eat the wealthy. And statements were posted to websites and social feeds committing that “we stand with the black community”, failing to see that the statement itself reveals racist segregation in our core. If “we” included the black community “we” wouldn’t have to stand with the black community, “we” would be the black community.

The statements were not enough to calm the protests. Half of the African American population in the US is unemployed, working single mothers were also having to homeschool their children, many without the option of remote work. The essential workers of the nation were black and brown people, out working everyday exposed to a deadly virus and being paid pennies compared to the CEO who is working safer at home. This is the inequity that made people stand when there was nothing to take our attention away from our pain. Now we see organizations making commitments to donate millions to end racial injustice. Far too many are making those commitments without any African American diversity in their leadership team or board of directors. Many of these companies don’t even have a single African American in VP or Senior Director level. Corporate movement toward meaningful action is still too slow.

I am reminded of a song I downloaded on Napster 20 years ago, Mississippi Gotdamn by Nina Simone. Nina’s crushing sorrow melodically fills the track as she sings of the slow to act leaders of our nation. When Nina sings about “Everybody knows about Mississippi Gotdamn!” the everybody that she refers to are our nation’s leaders who do nothing to stop the lynchings, murders, terrorism and oppression faced by people of African descent in America. It’s about people with power who know about the horrors and are being complicit to do nothing about it. Leaders who beg us to be patient and to go slow with social progress like ending segregation which still exists through economic barriers til this day. Leaders who tell us that we aren’t being hired or promoted to leadership in corporations because we are “too slow”. The juxtaposition of these competing ideas send chills down the spine of anyone listening who demands action. Does Mississippi Gotdamn send chills down the spine of wealthy leaders too? If not then what will?

I won’t create a long list of calls to action because corporate leaders only need to do 3 things to create true equity in our world.

1. Hire, invest in, and promote people of African descent and other BIPOC proportionately at your organization and release the data for transparency. Whether you are a business, a non-profit, a government office, or a venture capital firm. The call to action is the same — Make the Hire, Send the Wire.
2. Create transparency in compensation, purchasing and other investments. Publicly release compensation bands for roles within your company so every employee knows where the other stands. Publicly release purchase order cost ranges by type and frequency of repeat service. Publicly release angel-seed-series A+ investment, grants and donation amounts by organization and affiliation.
3. Make public statements to work toward ending the segregation that creates traumatic and substandard living conditions for marginalized communities in your state, nation and the world. Everyone deserves to be well fed, sheltered, clothed, educated and protected.

We all have a part to play, gotdamn! Act now!