Last Thursday evening was a night of important conversations and ways to change our community.
“Lift Every Voice” featured courageous conversations with a number of leadership figures in Osceola County. Hosted by Solid Rock Community Church, members of the congregation and community came together to discuss the tough conversations such as education, health, and community outreach.
Solid Rock Pastor Matthew Quainoo, who said, “In the words of Cornell West, ‘The condition of truth is to let suffering speak.” moderated the event.
“Once we allow people on the margins, people who are oppressed to speak, what it does is it changes the narrative. Whoever controls the historical narrative, also controls the social arrangement in our society and democracy. This event is not necessarily about speaking for people, but passing them the mic, so that they have the chance to share their experiences and their hardships.”
Fellow Pastor Tiffany Jeffers coordinated the event and mentioned principles she feels needed to become a successful nation.
“If we can get back to God, love, family, and values, we can see some change,” she said. “If we start individually in our own families, and instill those values, then it will grow out to our communities and the world.”
Panelists such as Kissimmee Commissioner Angela Eady and St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce Board Chairman LaVell Monger said they wanted to be a part of these conversations to not only reach out to the community, but to blaze the trail for others.
“I believe this panel was important for the county because, a lot of times we as black people in this county, it’s hard to identify other black people in this county who are doing the same work,” Monger said. “A lot of work happens for our community in Orange and Orlando. To create an opportunity like this to bring like driven people to the table, it’s going to attract other like driven people to have conversations that are important for me being the first black chairman for St. Cloud, and youngest chairman as well, it’s important to rely on that history.”
As leaders in the community continue to reach out to have these important conversations, the leaders in attendance encouraged the next generation to blaze the trail for their future by having these conversations.
Said Quainoo: “We don’t have a choice. Martin Luther King said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ We are all tied together in a single garment. The idea that people are afraid to have these conversations, that’s privilege talking. It’s the privilege to decide to engage or disengage. But when you truly identify those who are suffering, when you love your neighbor as you love yourself, you say, if they’re in pain then I’m in pain. To be silent is to give consent to injustice.”
