For all his admirable work across the decades rescuing prisoners on death row and speaking out for the defenseless, one of the things that I have always taken away from the eminent lawyer and civil rights champion, Bryan Stevenson, is that he talks about proximity to suffering.
Stevenson believes in the powerful need to get closer to the marginalized to develop a sense of moral urgency to confront the challenges of inequality in underserved communities. There is often a disconnect between power and the people it claims to serve.
“…What I believe is that in poor communities all across the world, in places where there is suffering, and places where people have been marginalized in jails and prisons, and places where people have been oppressed and pushed down, there are still songs being sung,” Stevenson said in a 2024 lecture at the University of Notre Dame.
He added, “When you get proximate, you hear the songs. And those melodies in those songs will empower you, they will inspire you, and they will teach you what doing justice and loving mercy is all about,” he said. “That is why I’m urging you, all of you, to find ways to get closer to the poor and the excluded, the marginalized and the neglected, and to go with an open heart and listen for the songs that will teach you the things we need to understand.”
Leaders attending this week’s Mackinac Policy Conference, hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber, could take a page from Stevenson. They can move beyond symbolic language and branding exercises that take place on the island to talking about how opportunity in Michigan and the nation is still determined by ZIP code, race, wealth, relationship and proximity to power.
For example, a city like Benton Harbor, which is extremely poor, will hardly ever take center stage at this kind of conference, even though it would bring much-needed attention to the community. That is the distance between power and pain.
Benton Harbor, a city of roughly 10,000, embodies all of the challenges of inequality Michigan faces. From an unstable school system to debilitating health inequities, it underscores the fact that the absence of access, representation, investment and political visibility has consequences on the life of any given community.
That means the political and business elites who travel to Mackinac Island for the conference to listen to keynote speeches and presentations designed to “move the state forward” need to realize that those living in the communities have the most understanding of why the system is failing them.
But to understand those residents is to give them a hearing on a big stage such as Mackinac. Or visit their communities to have an educated and authentic understanding of their suffering and what the next governor of the state ought to do about it.
For 20 years, I have been attending the conference. It’s become a gathering of those who are already powerful, when it should serve as a bridge between the leadership of the state and the lived realities of those who live beyond the elite networking circles on the island.
What I have discovered in attending the conference all these years is that too many leaders arrive on the island with access, influence and talking points instead of moral courage. But there is a moral contradiction when discussing massive billion-dollar investments on an opulent island when children and families in communities like Benton Harbor cannot afford healthcare, reliable transportation and housing.
We cannot talk about talent pipelines when entire communities across the state feel locked out of opportunity because investments rolled out on the island may never come to their communities. It is one thing to talk about making Michigan competitive and prosperous. But we cannot do so when so many feel excluded from that prosperity.
Real leadership requires proximity to suffering, as Stevenson intimated.
This is not an argument against the business leadership that gathers on the island to discuss the future of the state’s economic growth. Michigan needs investment, innovation and strong companies to compete in the digital economy. But growth has to be broader and more accessible to include underserved communities.
Michigan cannot claim prosperity if large segments of its population remain economically invisible. That is why business leaders of conscience are needed. Those who understand that economies exist to expand dignity and opportunity for workers. Business leaders who are not only capable of expanding markets in the state, but also have a moral imagination that would cause them to ask why Benton Harbor remains a poster child of economic exclusion.
A deeper moral reckoning about proximity, accountability and shared responsibility is needed.
The conference may end with leaders speaking the language of hope while many communities continue to lose faith in the systems that govern their lives.
The challenge is to ensure that hope is accompanied by access to opportunity and that people know their lives matter to the powerful attending the conference.
“We cannot allow ourselves to become hopeless about all of the ugliness and the violence and the division that we’re seeing around us,” Stevenson said, “because I am persuaded that hopelessness is the enemy of justice, and injustice prevails where hopelessness persists.”
Bankole Thompson’s columns appear on Mondays and Thursdays in The Detroit News.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Mackinac Policy Conference leaders need to face reality |
Opinion
Reporting by Bankole Thompson, Special to the Holland Sentinel / The Holland Sentinel
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