Good Stuff from Joan Eisenstodt

(This is a long post - take time to read it when you want to have your mind and heart engaged.)

This post is a result of years of being active in the civil rights and human rights movements.  If you attended the PCMA Education Foundation Awards Dinner, you would have heard me quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and heard me say that we need a more inclusive industry.  It has been my 'battlecry' for many years.  It seems that the few who jump into battle with me feel the same way I do: we are frustrated and angry that little is done.

So let's begin - while we are building the good bagel movement for a bit of fun (and seriousness.. I can't eat one more bad bagel!) let's pick up where the industry's Unity Team of the early '90s began with a study on diversity in our industry and then stopped, and make a difference.

Do you know that song ("Carefully Taught")  from "South Pacific" - about being taught to learn to hate?  It is quite moving and quite appropos for discussion for our industry, one in which there is still such a great lack of diversity in so many positions and where little to nothing has been done to educate all of us about the world's cultures, religions, beliefs, practices, ethnicities, etc.

On Friday, 11 April, after a business trip, rather than catching up on much needed rest, I spent the evening watching some provocative programs on PBS and MSNBC.  The programs all seemed to tie together  and reflect on diversity, inclusion, and acceptance, about which Sue Pelletier has written in  "Association Meetings" and at http://meetingscollaborative.com/www.meetingsnet.com and directly to the articles: http://meetingsnet.com/searchresults/?terms=Diversity&rp=

Bill Moyers Journal on PBS was a story about poverty in the United States and the people who now need the ever-shrinking sources of food from food banks and about how food that used to be given to the food banks is now being sold overseas.  http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04112008/watch.html

The program ties to the subject of this blog because one man, of those interviewed, said he used to hate those who had to depend on handouts.  Now he, who used to have a good job and buy the best cuts of meat and best vegetables, depended on the offerings at a food bank.  He said he would never feel the same again about those who needed help.

Or the woman, in her 80s, who said she was willing to still work - that she had worked from the time she was 16 - but that no one would hire her and her social security check covered so little that she too had to depend on the food bank offerings or she would starve.

Or the working poor about whom so much has been written - people going hungry because even while  working 2 and 3 jobs, they cannot make ends meet or feed their families.  I imagine many of them are in our industry and in particular in service positions.

How does this wealthy country (and industry) allow this to happen? And why are those who are in need hated or feared so much? Our industry does some good - PCMA's "Network for the Needy" and the cooperation of some hotels with food pantries or shelters are examples.  It's only a beginning.

In the Washington Post on 12 April was this article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103533.html about a proposed summit to be convened to discuss 3 of the world's religions.  It may or may not get off the ground.  It may or may not have the people at the table who need to be there.

 Why can't our industry begin this process? We have an international community available to us to discuss these issues.

 MSNBC: If you did not see "Meeting David Wilson" and the discussion, moderated by Brian Williams, held at Howard University in Washington, DC, following the broadcast of the documentary, watch it on line:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24075430#24075430

There were so many discussion points in this documentary.  The parallels I saw to the Holocaust of the '30s and '40s in Europe; the internment of US citizens of Japanese descent in the US; the current situations all over the world boggled my mind.  It was all there to see and then discuss and to move us to action.

Following the "2 Davids" documentary was another documentary, "Mississippi Cold Case" which first aired in 2007. I'd read about the case and had not seen the documentary. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19236422/ 

Last nite, my spouse and I  sat up and talked between commercials and into the wee hours.  We wondered if Sen. Barack Obama, by making his remarkable speech about race in America, was the catalyst for bringing a greater dialogue about race - and religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, abilities, gender, age, and so much more - into the consciousness of all people or only those of us who were, already, talking.

Join me, here, in a conversation about our industry and what we can do to dispell myths, open eyes, and begin to make a difference.