Finding Inspiration
by Janet Singer, Political Director
“Change that lasts takes longer to cement.” At this year’s Radcliffe Day, the Radcliffe Medal honoree Ophelia Dahl, co-founder of Partners in Health, explained that frustration with how slow change can be and patience for the long game are both needed to make progress in social justice. I attend this annual event whenever I can. The gathering of mostly women—mostly gray-haired, some with big hats—celebrating the year’s honoree always reminds me of the community of women who over generations have brought about human rights progress through thoughtful debate. I love looking around at this sea of women, some of them my old friends, and feeling we were all shaped by–and continue to shape–the Radcliffe legacy. The experience always makes me reflect on the years of feminist activism that has brought us to where we are, and I always leave feeling inspired.
This year, as the panel of dynamic, powerful women discussed global health, I listened and reflected on Crimson Goes Blue and how our work fits into the greater struggle for social justice. One panelist spoke of coming together to build our collective strength, emphasizing the importance of listening to everyone in the room–in her case, often a dirt-floored home in India, all sitting in a circle on the floor, all at the same level, learning from each other’s experiences. As she talked, my mind went to experiences I’ve had of listening to voters and also to Crimson Goes Blue members from across the country who bring their unique perspectives to our work. I reflected on how one of the legacies of being at Harvard is that this particular community expects success. That expectation and its concomitant optimism carry us while we do the hard work of winning elections.
When Dahl described going house-to-house to see for herself what people needed in order to achieve health and well-being, I thought of our experiences canvassing as out-of-towners. She spoke of the insights she had gained by talking to people in a village so far from her own comfortable home. Why, she wanted to know, was it so hard to stop the spread of tuberculosis even though we have drugs to cure it? An obstacle she hadn’t anticipated: the need for transportation to the clinic. How best to motivate people to take the complicated regimen of pills? One villager put it simply: “You have to believe in your future.”
Isn’t that belief also what motivates people to vote? As members of the Harvard community, we have always had the luxury (and the pressure) of believing in our future. We were told early on that we could make our futures and that they should/would be bright indeed. So, here we are, working on that future. So glad to be doing it in the company of all of you.
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