Greetings Friends,
We have been through a lot over the last few months. The mental, physical and economic strain is really pulling at the fabric of our community. It is hard and we don’t know all of the answers. While we were already raw from our time sheltering in place due to COVID, waiting to go back to work or even being on the front lines as an essential worker, we had to have a new reality of how this world connects and how we view justice in our community. Two very complicated issues made a very pronounced collision. Was it that we all more aware since we were sheltering, and watching the news and social media? For whatever reason, these did collide and it sparked a global movement.
I am struggling through this too. The July issue is usually one of the easiest we do every year, with the parade, summer fun and the Stanislaus County Fair. But nothing is normal this year and some of the usual things we cover and even our cover ideas seemed really tone and color deaf. It should be an easy conversation about understanding, but it isn’t. It all depends on the lens from which you view. I can think that I am racially inclusive and aware, but am I? Are there biases I’m unaware of? I would hope that many people are having the same thoughts and this moment in time has a different outcome this time. We must fix the social injustices that are happening, and awareness and video of these incidents make it clear that we need to change what we are doing and not let this moment pass without meaningful changes.
One thing I have learned through my life, is that we are never to old to learn and try to understand. What does it mean to understand? How can we be better? Is there something we missed? How do we make sure that our community not make the same mistakes in the future and create real change? To learn more, I invited Wendy Byrd of the NAACP to try to help explain how we got to where we are and what understanding we might need to have to make progress and I hope you read that on page 12 at www.modestoview.com/the-magazine
We are very fortunate that we have a multi-cultural community dialog that makes it possible to solve some of these issues and hope that we can have a better understanding. Modesto has a police chief with Galen Caroll that understands and has shown that we can rise above this and hears our community. I have learned so much and I hope it will educate you too. But there is so much more to do and learn. There are no easy answers and it is all about true understanding.
We have challenges to open our community back up safely, we need to bring our people together with understanding and all of us have to work together to make our community truly strong and healthy. We are counting on each other and I thank you so much for being part of the conversation. ModestoView is a place for positivity and even though these are complicated, we can approach this in a positive way.
My daughter is going to have our first grandchild this month and it really makes you think about what our community can be for our next generations. I wish you all safety, friendship, compassion and care as we move forward. Let’s beat back this COVID and lift each other. Like our cover says, we need to be good to each other and we all have a lot to learn.
Best to you all,
Chris Murphy – Publisher and Founder, ModestoView
chrism@spwg.com<mailto:chrism@spwg.com>
