Time to Tell the Truth - Yolanda Caraway
The New York State Writers Institute held its virtual symposium in November 2020. The event was called ‘Telling the Truth 2020’ where various influential people have discussed politics, tribalism, polarization, and the future of democracy.
As truth tellers and political trailblazers for Black women everywhere, author of ‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics’ Yolanda Caraway, along with her co-authors Minyon Moore and Leah D. Daughtry participated as guest speakers.
The director of the institute Paul Grondahl, introduced the group:
“These are three powerful and influential women who have worked as political strategists behind the scenes together and sometimes separately for more than 30 years. They’ve worked on several presidential campaigns including those of Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. They’re also the co-authors of this amazing book ‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics.”
The group discussed the political climate of 2020, the most recent presidential election, and the Black lives matter movement.
Below are some of Yolanda’s comments on the protests for social change and the future of the country:
“Well I am a child of the 60’s, so I have been through similar events all my life. The most prominent difference that I see this time is that it’s a far more diverse group of people protesting for equality. There are way more people chiming in and coming in such as in Portland, where there aren’t even that many black people. White people are protesting everywhere. I went down to Washington, D.C. to the Black lives matter plaza one day and it was really beautiful to see. They’re all young, I don’t think anybody there was even over 21, but they were being polite; they had their masks on, and they were socially distancing. I believe that this is their time. I think that they’ve seen what’s happened over the last four years to everybody in our country and realized that this is their time to take a stance. These young individuals- they realize it’s their time to step up for everyone are using the courage to do so.”
“I just want to see more love and caring from people. It seems as though we’ve almost forgotten that we’re human, we treat people like they’re not even human anymore. I want to see that change now. I am hopeful that if this [Trump’s] administration is gone, that then we can get back to the way that we used to be. I hope we can try to rebuild the country and have some unity because know nobody can do it alone. We have to band together to try to rebuild everything because we have no idea what’s really been torn down at this point. It’s going to take a village to get us back, but it is possible if done in unison.”
