Black Lives Matter
As human beings, we all carry the inherent desire to experience wholeness--within ourselves, within our relationships, and within our communities.
At Plenitud, a big part of our service is helping people to reconnect with that wholeness through personal, relational, and communal development.
Serving others with love honors this desire for wholeness, and creates experiences for people in which it can be nourished and extended. When we are empowered to do this unconditionally, we allow the dream of a more harmonious and sustainable future to come alive.
No one is left out in this vision. We all deserve the opportunity to experience our own inherent worth and wholeness through nourishing relationships, personal growth, and supportive community.
We believe that as part of our work to encourage these qualities in ourselves and in our communities, we must speak out when we see a person’s capacity for the experience of wholeness intentionally denied and oppressed, on an individual or collective level.
As our world continues to cope with the COVID-19 virus, we are now confronted with a pandemic of another kind: systemic racism.
The continuous violence Black people in the United States experience at the hands of police - and countless other groups - is a humanitarian crisis. It is but one symptom of a deliberately designed structure of oppression that has intentionally denied civil and human rights to Black people for centuries.
It is completely unacceptable for this violence to be a recurring and persistent feature of life in the United States, and we must recognize that we have not done enough to address it.
We at Plenitud PR have a role to play in this, and we are continuously evaluating what that role should look like and how we can better incorporate anti-racist activism and the ideals of unconditional love and equity into our everyday work.
Recognition
Racism is a key component of colonial power, created by white settlers to maintain a society of white supremacy at the expense of forced servitude and genocide, inflicted primarily on Black/indigenous peoples. Its legacy is not limited to the United States: Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and all of the Americas still suffer from the effects of colonization and human exploitation. As such, we must recognize that the injustices being highlighted in the US also take on their own expressions here in Puerto Rico. In learning more about the history of racism in Puerto Rico, our eyes have opened up to the unique ways in which Puerto Rico plays a part in this collective moment, and we are dedicated to continued learning on how Plenitud PR can serve our community here at home.
Racism is also alive and well in the fields of sustainability, permaculture, and environmentalism. Practices of earth-care are rooted in Black and indigenous traditions, yet today participation often excludes these groups and exploits their wisdom. Our identity as a center of sustainability must acknowledge this and ensure that our work is committed to highlighting and centering the traditions in which modern sustainability practices are rooted.
Accountability
We are committed to doing our own inner, reflective work as an organization. It is our responsibility to reflect on and recognize our privileges as a staff composed of a majority of non-Black/Afro-latinx individuals in a racialized society. In this process, we must learn how to use these privileges for the empowerment of Black and Afro-latinx life both in the US and in Puerto Rico.
We must recognize our shortcomings in our solidarity work and learn how we can do better. Our work may not be purposefully excluding anyone from having a seat at the table, but we must look at whether we’re actively extending it to others. In other words, it is not enough for us to be “non-racist” as a community. We must be actively, directly anti-racist in order to meaningfully confront white supremacy as it exists in ourselves and our communities.
Solidarity
We are committed to identifying and supporting the outer work that is currently in progress. Love and service are not just ideals-they are practical extensions of confronting injustice and transforming it. We invite you to consider how you can join this movement of anti-racism and support ongoing activism efforts in the US.
Organizations in Minneapolis and other places in the US:
Below is a list of organizations that are doing important community-centered organizing on the ground in Minneapolis and other places in the US. Donating to these organizations helps to invest in BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & people of color) communities, organizers, and solidarity groups as we prepare for anti-racist work for the longterm. Click the name to learn more about the organization, and the “donate” link below to support:
Organizations in Puerto Rico:
In addition, we want to uplift and magnify voices here on the island of Puerto Rico where Plenitud PR is based. These organizations have been consistently dedicated to anti-racist work here, and we encourage you to connect and support them:
It is tragic that another Black person had to be murdered in order to stir the collective awakening that we are witnessing now. We must consider why this is the case, and how we can better use our lives to center those who face continuous, deliberate violence at the hands of an inequitable and unjust system.
A system can only survive through the support of a collection of individuals, and, in turn, can be eliminated when those individuals stop supporting the system itself. For all of us, that means doing everything we can to actively resist and dismantle structures that encourage and allow for such violence to take place. Now, more than ever, we must unify against white supremacy and other systematic reflections of violence, and commit ourselves to build a future that recognizes and empowers the wholeness in everyone. We thank everyone in our community for standing with us in this fight and for helping us learn how to show up for it each day.
Black lives mattered yesterday, they matter today, and they will matter every day onward. We stand united with our community and with Black, Indigenous, and people color everywhere in the effort to reflect and extend the inherent worth, dignity, and wholeness of every child of Mother Earth.
In peace and solidarity,