Guest columnist Melissa S. Flournoy called recently for a vision for Louisiana’s future “that is inclusive and equitable and lifts families out of poverty and on a pathway to prosperity.”
United Way of Southeast Louisiana couldn’t agree more.
We hold a vision of equitable communities where all individuals are healthy, educated, and financially stable.
Our Blueprint for Prosperity calls for us to achieve that vision by working collaboratively with partners, both public and private. COVID-19’s health and economic impacts are threatening our ability to work aggressively toward our vision as the issue is drawn out along partisan and racial lines.
We originally championed the rallying cry, “Viruses don’t discriminate,” as so many organizations did around the country and the globe, yet we’ve come to learn that is simply not true.
The health effects of COVID-19 do discriminate, but we have an opportunity to right the ship and ensure our state never witnesses these downright embarrassing effects of a pandemic on its people again.
United Way is already taking steps to move the ongoing conversation around COVID-19 forward into action, including offering immediate crisis grants to both nonprofits and individuals, advocating in support of bipartisan federal and state relief packages, stabilizing our region’s early care and education network, and offering financial capability education to the public.
Yet, we have not gone ahead alone. We walked hand in hand with our partners and elected officials from both sides of the aisle to achieve this progress, and it is not time to abandon that collaborative approach.
This is a matter of life and death, of black and white, but not of red and blue.
We have an opportunity to blaze a path for our future in which all individuals are healthy, educated, and economically stable.
Please listen to the experts, listen to the data, and do not ignore the thousands of lives we’ve already lost to COVID-19.
We cannot afford to get this wrong.
KIM SPORT
committee chair, public policy
CHARMAINE CACCIOPPI
executive vice president, United Way of Southeast Louisiana