Our Promise to the Bridgeport Community

We stand with the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Dreasjon Reed, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless others that have died senseless and tragic deaths. For far too long, our society has rationalized, normalized, and accepted institutionalized racism that has led to entrenched inequities and injustices experienced by our Black communities. Willful blindness is not an option. Silence is not an option. Each of us has a duty not only to stand up to racism, but to actively and fervently work to dismantle it. We write to add Bridgeport Prospers to the chorus committing to do better.

We have seen these issues of inequity up close as our team at the United Way has worked over the last few months to support our local Bridgeport partners and those they serve impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while many have utilized this pandemic to shed light on these inequities across the nation, these same communities have been disenfranchised long before the first COVID-19 case was discovered. Innumerable policies within our systems of healthcare, education, employment, criminal justice, housing, and others have unfairly devastated and destabilized countless Black children, families, and communities.

As Executive Director of Bridgeport Prospers at the United Way CFC, we still have deep work to do as an organization—listening, learning, unlearning, and planning—so that we can enter with integrity into public conversations, as we continue to partner with cross-sector organizations to make progress in changing these systems through a collective impact lens. We will continue our work to create healthy support systems around children so that they can thrive, even in the face of systemic racism. As a community, this begins by working together to build safety and security; to provide access to quality health care that looks at the whole of a child, including mental health and development; to promote early childhood development and literacy; to ensure access to exceptional instructional curriculum in all schools at all grade levels, particularly STEM; and to provide equal employment opportunities. We are committed to the hard and impactful conversations that are needed to dismantle, then re-build, these systems.

We also recognize that statements of solidarity from organizations should come with commitments to anti-racist work. In the coming weeks and months, we commit to evaluating our own internal operations and systems and building our capacity to make measurable progress towards being an equitable, diverse, and inclusive organization. We will listen, learn, and collaborate with our partners and team in an effort to seek meaningful, impactful ways to address these issues within our own initiative, as well as for the Bridgeport Community. We know these efforts will require candor and courage. We look forward to working with you in these efforts.

Let’s stand up for Black families and the Bridgeport community-- and never back down.