Neighbors Matter (podcast episode 1) "Benders of the Arc: Hope Before It Learns to Wait"
Dr. King told us the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends toward justice. Here is the part we forget. The arc doesn’t bend itself. Somebody has to do the bending.
In the first episode of Neighbors Matter, you’ll meet some who do.
They are students at Randolph Union High School. They could have studied homelessness from a safe distance, the way schools usually teach it. Instead they got to know Shannon, a lifelong Vermonter who is unhoused with her family. Not a case. Not a statistic. A neighbor.
Then they did what too few of us are willing to do. They carried her story, with her, to the Vermont State House, and asked the people in power to listen. You’ll hear what it sounds like when some of those people look at a neighbor in need and look away.
This episode also names a marginalization we rarely say out loud. Ageism. Vermont’s status quo underestimates its young people, and to underestimate someone is to push them to the edge. So we hand these young leaders the microphone. What you’ll hear is what equity, interdependence, justice, and transformation sound like in their voices. Hope, before the world teaches it to wait.
This is the first episode of Neighbors Matter, the next chapter of the work we began with Voices from the Edge. The conviction has not changed. Every neighbor is equally and inherently worthy. Neighbors matter.
