A message from 4C for Children President/CEO Vanessa Freytag to our community:
Grief. Anger. Frustration. Fear.
All these emotions are what the staff of 4C for Children and I are feeling as we all try to process the horrific death of George Floyd and the national and local unrest that has followed.
The ugly truth, though, is that these emotions and the resulting actions are not only because of George Floyd. It’s because of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner and Michael Brown. They are all the faces–among so many others–of the systemic racism that is part of the experience of being African American in the United States. We join the voices within our community calling for this to end.
We shed tears this morning on our agency-wide conference call, with many staff sharing their thoughts and emotions tied to the week’s events and its impact on themselves, their children, their work and the families and child care providers in our community.
We at 4C for Children stand in solidarity with our community working for systemic change. The answers to how this happen aren’t clear or easy, but we must persevere.
Our staff work everyday to support the families and child care providers in our community so that they can give children the tools they need to succeed in life. We know that children are not born with implicit bias. Racism is learned.
Leslie Johnson, a 4C for Children team member and African-American mother, spoke this morning of her work in supporting child care providers as they “focus on not just preparing our children to succeed academically, but to succeed as citizens of the human race who place gentleness, kindness and love above race, ethnicity and politics.”
That’s a responsibility that we all have and to which 4C for Children remains committed.
Sincerely,
Vanessa Freytag
President/CEO, 4C for Children