RE: COVID 19 and Witnessing Social Injustice

Within NAAP’s corporate mission stands a final mandate. We are charged with, “Implementing and maintaining policies that ensure NAAP’s commitment to promoting diversity, social justice, and social responsibility.”

NAAP will be holding virtual events in the coming weeks to address how these issues have impacted our community and our institutes. Please look for the notices to be sent out shortly and join us in the conversation, partnering toward change.

The self-quarantine and anxiety of the past several months has not daunted concerned Americans from attending the protest marches we are seeing now, but the tragedy that triggered it has been with us a long time. It is heartbreaking, devastating, and humiliating as a citizen of this country to see events like the ruthless murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and to listen to those who might try to shade the truth to justify this hideous action.

At NAAP we reach out to you in sadness, overwhelmed by the grief of the moment. We have all felt the double assault of the COVID 19 pandemic and the recent violence against a lone, unresisting Black man at the hands of men we are supposed trust to protect us. We know we cannot afford to sit back silently. We must work together to make our world safe and transform social injustice into social justice.

Welcome to our conversation. As the American Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, says in her poem dedicated to the opening of the Statue of Liberty Museum,

Be my guest. Drink tea, taste fruit and bread…
Stranger, you’re the words to a hymn I’ve only ever hummed.
Come. Let’s erase the distance between skin and skin.

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