There is Only Us

By Maria Cadenas, Executive Director of Santa Cruz Community Ventures 

Our work at SCCV is grounded on our belief that a new economy that creates a more equitable, sustainable, and just community for all is possible and necessary.  

Our work is beyond poverty, beyond access to a broken system. Our work is about the world we want to see and the economic and business systems that will help us get there. We are at a point of innovation, imagination, and vision.  

​Our work is based on the U.S. ideals that we are all created equal and with the promise that we have indelible right to life, liberty, and happiness.   

But to build something new, to emerge beyond the world we know, we have to acknowledge and recognize the hate and divisiveness that came into full view in Virginia this weekend.  

If we are brave enough to take on changing our economic and business models, we must be brave enough to talk about race. When we talk about working to create a new economy, when we speak about wealth gaps and affordability, we are talking about the fact that the system itself does not work. And it does not work precisely because of the inequities it is built on. 

Today, I ask that we have the courage to be visible and intentional about our support of those U.S. ideals of equity and opportunity for all.   
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Let us remember, that to speak of innovation and truly bring change, we have to take a long hard look at unspoken assumptions, unacknowledged privilege, and have the courage to acknowledge that we are in this together. After all, there is only us.  
 
#NotSilent