By the Staff of Rooted
Madison has always been a tale of two cities. At Rooted we acknowledge that. It’s why we brought two organizations together through merger, one in South Madison (Center for Resilient Cities) and one on the Northside (Community GroundWorks). While we saw that our South Madison work was centering on communities of color and was increasingly led by the community, we also felt our Northside work, while robust, had lost the voices of communities of color, and that needed to change.
We believe healthy and resilient communities are made up of people who have roots in their community, and those aren’t easy for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) to grow in Madison. We are committed to centering their voices in our work and doing our part to change that.
Today, all of us in the United States are facing the backlash of years of not getting it right — years of letting the Black community, in particular, not grow roots or a firm footing in our community or very few communities in our country. That must change. Though we don’t have all the answers, we have chosen as an organization to go in search of them and to do so with our BIPOC communities taking the lead.
The past few months have been extraordinarily difficult. We’re far from being out the other side. Besides the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve been coping with, we’re bumping up hard against the pandemic of structural racism and oppression on which this country was founded over 400 years ago. The two together have amplified and brought into sharp relief the daily and the extreme injustices and disparities that all people of color experience, but especially Black people. Each of us is feeling the hardship of these times in different ways.
This work is serious, deadly serious. At Rooted, we are committed to our antiracist journey and we expect to be held accountable in that work.
We stand in solidarity with the Black-led organizations we have partnered with, including Freedom Inc., Urban Triage, Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness, EQT by Design, YWCA Madison, Young Moms of Madison, Venus Inspires, EOTO, One City and others. We deeply appreciate the opportunities we have had to work with them, while sharing knowledge, creating community and breaking bread together. We urge you to support Madison’s Black-led organizations. Get to know their work and the people they center in their work.
We also urge you to support local Black businesses. You can visit the Madison Black Chamber of Commerce website for a directory (madisonblackchamber.com). You can support many of these businesses this summer at the Badger Rock Community Market.
As the home to Badger Rock Middle School, Troy Kids Garden and the Goodman Youth Farm, we recognize and uplift the voice of our youth in this movement as our work centers around them.