Nature & Sustainability

While you read, enjoy listening to the song "We Are" by Jon Baptiste.
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Last night at 11:30pm, I noticed how many of my colleagues had been working that evening and were still working at that late moment. A lot of exciting things are going on at Usdan: enrollment for returning families opens via a new database portal on Monday, our first socially distant private tours for prospective families begin on Sunday, the board meets Tuesday, appeal letters are going out, meetings with supporters are happening. It is a very full and exciting time.

At that late hour, as I caught up on dishes and listened to a playlist of the best songs from 2020, I heard the Jon Batiste song “We Are.” It’s a very inspirational song with the refrain: “We are, we are, we are, we are the chosen ones.”

“We Are” reminds me of the 2019 NYC Climate March, where I saw many Usdan families and a spoken word performance by a youth climate activist who I admire called Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. Martinez’s message to the youth at the march was: they are the chosen ones. As I listened to “We Are” last night, I understood that something happened to us this year and now we are all the chosen ones.

We all have the responsibility to make the change needed in our world, and hearing these performances makes carrying that responsibility a little bit lighter. I hope you enjoy listening to Jon Batiste and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez.

Lauren Brandt Schloss, Executive Director