08 - How might we create antiracist futures?
Ivan Okello is a first-generation immigrant from Uganda, East Africa currently based in the Siknikt district of the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq, a city also known as Moncton, NB. Ivan currently serves as the Project Manager of Antiracism Initiatives at the New Brunswick Multicultural Council (NBMC).
He is an educator and storyteller who believes in using education as a medium for bridging social inequities and advancing social change. His goal is to live in a society free of injustice.
Ivan’s educational background includes Gender studies, International Development and Antiracism/decolonization. He has previously worked in post-secondary institutions, and non-Profits. Ivan is passionate about building bridges across diverse communities and ensuring that society/organizations are (re)designed to serve and cultivate everyone’s potential.
I hope you’ll join Ivan and I for this great conversation about creating antiracist futures, where we explore relationships with family, across borders and within our homes. At the end of the episode, I share the poem below from Yung Pueblo, that I hope may help each of us as we consider our daily roles in creating the future we hope for. I’ve included it here for you to ponder in text.
The world is changing fast, especially technologically. The speed at which we receive information and the views of others on our phones/screens is daunting. Forcing ourselves to have an opinion on every single matter that arises is unrealistic, it takes a lot of time to process unbiased information that can help us build an educated view on a topic. To slow ourselves down, so we can simply listen, ponder and learn more about different global situations feels hard when the internet is begging us to jump to conclusions. There is also the ancient urge to adopt the opinions of those around us so that we do not feel left out of the herd. Even so, if we want to live in our power, we need to slow down, especially if it feels like the world is moving fast. There is nothing wrong with saying, “I actually want to learn more about what is going on before I give my opinion.” The speed at which technology moves is anxiety inducing and it can set us up to think frantically, to jump from extreme to extreme. This means that the tools we use to develop our inner peace and wellbeing are more important than ever. To be able to deal with the chaos of the world, we need to consistently tend to our inner harmony. To do that, it is essential to hold our healing as a top priority.
