Hello!

Earlier this week I spoke with the executive director of a chamber of commerce for a small city in northern Colorado. They are grappling with questions from chamber members. These are small business owners, mostly. They're people you would normally see around town every day. They need to know if their business can be open, how it may operate, how to access to small business loans, and how to help their employees and families.

Her biggest concern is one that surfaced between the lines of the questions she was trying to answer. "Mental health is going to be a huge issue for these folks. For them and their employees. Nobody is addressing that and I think we need to," she told me.

She's right, of course. Inadequate mental health support, already a crisis in America, is going to crash across the country in the wake of Covid-19 and its associated isolation, unemployment and uncertainty.

The ability to foresee and better yet, of course, address the needs of a community is one indicator of an innovative membership program {and strong leadership to boot).

Covid-19 is throwing every communications, operations and program plan into disarray. If it's not, and you're still sending tone-deaf fundraising emails (like some political candidates I know), you're doing it all wrong. Be a resource. Be a vehicle for organizing self-support. Be a voice for your members needing help, even if the help needed isn't the problem you set out to solve in January.
 

We've been curating a list of articles, essays and resources that expand the conversation about equity, economic justice, environmental health and interdependence as we move forward - both near-term a long-term. (by the way, would love help curating, sorting and making sense of that list)

One question worth asking about this list: Can conversations about systems change (creating social safety nets, reshaping health care access, valuing every worker, rapidly moving to sustainable energy and more) spread beyond an echo chamber of advocates, organizers and policy analysts?

What's role do membership organizations have in expanding these conversations? In a moment when people need help, how do we help vastly more people learn about and work for systemic change?

These seem like useful questions going forward as we make community (and national) choices about if and how to embed care, equality and interdependence into our future.

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Here are a few of the articles and essays from the list mentioned above.

• Coronavirus: The moral logic of the response. David Roberts of Vox has one of the few pieces on economic stimulus that built upon a moral framework of community and interdependence.
   
• Universal Health Care is a National Security Issue. Public health is directly linked to a nation's strength. Perhaps a pandemic clarifies that fact for those in the defense spending business.
   
• Most Brown and Black Americans Are Exposing Themselves to Coronavirus for a Paycheck. Among the American workforce, just 16.2% of Hispanic workers and 19.7% of black Americans are able to work from home, while about 30% of whites and 37% of Asian-Americans can.

Note: We're not sharing any job listings but we do maintain a google spreadsheet full of job lists, email groups and online job boards centered around advocacy, social change, and social entrepreneurship. Loads of good people have added their finds to it over the past year. Use it, add to it and share it.

Question? Idea to share? Let's talk. Reply or email ted@brightplus3.com.

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The pen moves; the ideas form, as if by spirit hand. Something shines out, a truth so self-evident that the words dictate themselves. We're cashing in a billion years of planetary savings bonds and blowing it on assorted bling. And what Douglas Pavlicek wants to know is why this is so easy to see when you're by yourself in a cabin on a hillisde, and almost impossible to believe once you step out of the house and join several billion folks doubling down on the status quo.

– Richard Powers, The Overstory