In many ways, it has been a painful year. Community Foundation Boulder County strives to be nonpartisan, but it is not neutral about the issues. As we zoom in from that iconic picture of Planet Earth to Boulder County, the global, international, national, and local issues connect us in one interdependent and profoundly personal reality.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
~Naomi Shihab Nye
Dear Friends,
In many ways, it has been a painful year. Community Foundation Boulder County strives to be nonpartisan, but it is not neutral about the issues. As we zoom in from that iconic picture of Planet Earth to Boulder County, the global, international, national, and local issues connect us in one interdependent and profoundly personal reality.
Although 2018 seemed a year unlike any other in recent memory, it sounded strong echoes of 2017. So, with regrets for many unstated headlines, here are some of the stories of another year in our life together.
Beginning with Planet Earth, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report describing food shortages, wildfires, mass deaths of coral reefs, etc., as soon as 2040 – within the lifetime of much of our global population. NASA climate modeler Gavin Schmidt predicted 2018 was “almost guaranteed to be the 4th warmest year on the record,” after the previous warmest years in 2016, 2015, and 2017 respectively.
Devastating wildfires in California followed its hottest summer to date in 2017 and its hottest month on record in July 2018. 2018 also witnessed Hurricanes Florence and Michael. If these stories sound familiar, you need only recall 2017 as the most destructive wildfire season in California to date and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria.
Here in Boulder County, the Community Foundation convened presentations on climate change and its Environmental Affinity Group coalesced for action and increased funding.
In 2018, “zero tolerance” separated children from their parents. The federal government shut down in January over disputes about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), deportation, and funding for a border wall. The federal government shut down again in December over the border wall.
Here in Boulder County, Community Foundation donors and its BRAVO Fund partnered to counsel and underwrite renewals for DACA recipients; the Latino History Project celebrated its fifth anniversary; and the Knight Community Information Lab gathered Latino bilingual bicultural brokers.
In 2018, we added Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida to a heartbreaking lexicon that includes Columbine, Sandy Hook, and others. Sadly, it was not an unusual year. Thirteen people were killed in Thousand Oaks, California; ten people were killed at a school in Santa Fe, Texas; five newsroom staff were killed in Annapolis, Maryland; and on and on. 2017 witnessed mass shootings in Las Vegas and a church in Texas.
Here in Boulder County, students across the county joined students of Parkland to stand up against gun violence and advocate for previously unattainable legislative change. Boulder’s City Council unanimously approved a ban on assault rifles.
2018 seared more places into our collective memory: Stephon Clark’s grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento; a Kroger supermarket in Jeffersontown, Kentucky where two people were killed for being African American; and The Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Here in Boulder County, we wept together at Har Hashem then gathered days later at a forum against hate convened with tragic foresight by D.A. Michael Dougherty. The Community Foundation joined many other organizations to support the “Holocaust by Bullets” exhibit at the Boulder Jewish Community Center.
Hate incidents also spiked in the wake of the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling. Efforts to ban transgender people from U.S. military service continue today.
In Boulder County, faith leaders met at the Community Foundation to express solidarity and plan advocacy with Out Boulder County.
2018 built on the “Me Too” movement. Women who had been wounded before, including women of Boulder County, stepped forward courageously and put their lives at risk to tell their stories.
The midterm elections changed the landscape of the nation and Colorado. Time Magazine’s “Year in Review” issue noted, “This year’s midterms included many firsts: in Colorado, Jared Polis became the first openly gay man elected governor in the U.S.; Sharice Davids and Debra Haaland, the first Native American women elected to Congress; and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the first Muslim women in Congress.”
The nation’s mood is roiling with concerns about international relations, federal investigations, trade disputes, and a very volatile market.
Through it all, your Community Foundation steadfastly improves our lives with programs and grants to nonprofit organizations across our community. Our programs and fundholders granted more than $8M in 2018, more than any year in the foundation’s history.
So passes another year in our lives. We cannot deny our sadness, but we did not succumb to it. Sorrow is the inevitable cost of love for each other, our community, and our world.
What we do matters. We catch the thread of sorrows and weave a sailcloth to fill with the winds of hope and resolve. For if sorrow is the cost of love, it is also transformed by love.
Let us set sail together into a new year and a future in which all are loved.
Yours in community,
Jeff
