A Kind Reminder

“Please, oh please, forgive everybody who’s forgotten where they come from. Who’s forgotten who they are.”

The line comes from a song called Kind Reminder by a band named Próxima Parada, and I think about it often. I was recently visiting with a mentor who asked me probing questions to help me contemplate the origin of my commitment to supporting social enterprises. "You serve on nonprofit boards. You invest time and money into them. You co-founded a company that amplifies their impact. Why?" Well, I suppose it’s because I know where I come from that I know who I am.

The Foundation of My Moral Universe

My nana, Arnida Lamont, was born in 1943. She was the second of 8 brothers and sisters, all born into relative poverty, and decades before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: the same year Arnida’s daughter (Monica, my mother) was born. That means that for the first 21 years of her life, she was not guaranteed civil rights under the law, and had little prospect of transcending her economic circumstances.

Despite this, Arnida began to take the business of building and maintaining her credit very seriously from a young age and was able to purchase her first residential property from her mother in 1981. At that time in DC, the diffusion of “crack cocaine” throughout many of the nation’s capital’s most marginalized communities gave way to a swell of associated crime and murder. By the early 1990s, D.C. had earned the morbid moniker of the “Murder Capital.” One result of the rise in drug crime and homicides was a decline in housing prices, as the affluent communities that worked in the elite circles of Capitol Hill, high-powered consulting firms, and nonprofit epicenters were reluctant to live amid the fallout of a failing system.

Another unfortunate correlation to the rise in crime related to the influx of crack cocaine was the rise in mental and behavioral health issues in DC. In an attempt to stave off the rising numbers of homelessness associated with victims of drug abuse, the Department of Behavioral Health (“DBH”) implemented a then-loosely regulated program in which it contracted with community-based providers to offer mental health services and supports. Against this backdrop, Arnida Lamont stood in the gap. She founded Lamont Homes by leveraging her excellent credit and savings to purchase a number of under-valued single-family residences and pledged them to providing a safe place to call home for the most vulnerable members of her community.

Over the course of 4 decades, Lamont Homes has provided assisted living services to DC adults in need of mental and behavioral health support. Its residents represent some of the most overlooked members of society and many come from one of the following 3 environments: the prison system, St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital, or homelessness. They are now provided with a supportive environment and a sense of community. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “The arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends toward justice.” I believe that to be true, but only because we make it so. Sustained individual commitments to make a better world than the one we know make it so. Efforts like those of my nana, like my parents, like my mentors. It’s because I know where I come from that I am who I am.

Bending Toward Justice

“Please, oh please, forgive everybody who's forgotten where they come from. Who's forgotten who they are.

They don't need your backs and hatred. They need your face. They need your embrace.”

?Have you heard of a village in the Italian alps called Aosta?

“Aosta was a sort of sanctuary city for people with disabilities, both mental and physical. For centuries, the Catholic Church had provided shelter, food, and care to people who had been abandoned by their families because of their condition. And many of these people had ended up becoming capable of work in the fields or in kitchens; many of them ended up falling in love, getting married, having children. What had emerged was a sort of upside-down town. A town where the abnormal was normal, where people often disabled by society received the support that allowed them to flourish.” – Why Fish Don’t Exist, LuLu Miller.

?I recently read this passage and was reminded intensely of the community Lamont Homes has built. Indeed, from the Italian Alps to the urban sprawl of DC – truly in every corner of the world – there are collectives of well-intentioned people gripping that moral arc of the universe with both hands and bending it toward justice, fairness, and equity.?

My purpose for sharing this personal story is to invite you to consider where you come from, who you are, and how you might contribute to moving the moral arc of the universe in the right direction. What follows is a recommendation for how you can do just that:

Capital Area Asset Builders

Pictured above is the first installment of a community partnership between Capital Area Asset Builders and Lamont Homes. I am invested in the continued impact of both organizations and, given their shared mission to uplift the DC community, the temptation to somehow bring them together was too powerful for me to resist.

CAAB addresses the historically rooted and pervasive racial wealth gap in Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland through five primary areas: personal financial capacity building, individual matched savings accounts, cash transfer programs, credit building initiatives, and public information campaigns. For 25 years, CAAB’s mission has been rooted in a vision for a Washington, DC metropolitan region where one’s birthplace, race and/or zip code doesn’t limit their economic opportunity and optimism. Over the past year, CAAB proudly supported more than 700 low-income families in the Washington, DC metropolitan region, enabling them to save $619,000 in total. Through public and private partnerships, these savings were matched over 4:1 for a total benefit of approximately $2.5 million.

Observing CAAB provide Lamont Homes employees with the tools they can use to attain financial self-efficacy feels like a strong tug on that arc. If even one beneficiary comes away with the same financial discipline and drive Arnida conjured 40 years ago, who knows what impact they might in turn create for generations to come.

A Call to Action

?“They don't need your backs and hatred. They need your face. They need your embrace.”

?Today CAAB provided Lamont Homes employees with the tools they need to exponentially improve their financial condition. The hope is that by going the extra mile for them, they will feel supported in sticking with a job that is vital to the wellbeing of our community. It all comes down to the beneficiaries after all; remember where they come from. My call to action, then, is to lend them your embrace by supporting CAAB, who has gone the extra mile to ensure that their caregivers, and hundreds of others in this area, are given the tools they need to succeed.

Today also happens to be Giving Tuesday, so this is likely not the first appeal to support a nonprofit you have seen recently. Surely it won’t be the last. And you may reasonably ask yourself: How will my contribution make a difference? What does my contribution look like on the ground? What will it feel like, for me and the lives I’m trying to reach?

I can tell you, it looks like a mother and daughter – a founder and CEO – seated elegantly at the front of a conference room in Anacostia Library, looking out over the 30 or so employees to whom they provide a meaningful vocation. And then, the CEO and Program Manager of CAAB standing in their place to share knowledge and resources designed to help those employees feel more secure in their finances, so they can focus on the work at hand.

I can tell you, it feels like everyone in that room was made better for coming together to exchange knowledge, experience, and purpose. It felt like we were moving toward a more prosperous future for all of us; and not just those in the room, but our neighbors, our community members, and all the ships rising on the tide.

?It looks like upward social mobility in the making. It feels like justice.