Leadership Isn’t About Them. It’s About Us.

With the final votes tallied early Wednesday morning, the first local elections in our new multi-crisis (political, cultural, economic, health) landscape are behind us. It was both inspiring to see so many Central Texans working to assess candidates, voting for the change they want delivered, and disheartening to see old patterns of division and small politics emerge in a few of the campaigns. It’s missing the moment.

I hope the SD-14 run off is more representative of this unique opportunity to deliver real and lasting change to our politics, policies, and institutions. I am optimistic that we can meet the challenge. And I’m certain that an emerging majority of Central Texans are expecting us to.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that for us “to emerge from this crisis, we need leaders who can overcome generations of physical and cultural barriers and long-standing regional expectations of have and have not.”

Since that post, our crisis landscape has expanded, caught fire, and, more than ever, exposed those artificial barriers.

But an emerging commitment to turn firestorm to forge has also risen. The challenge will lie in translating the energy on the street to energy inside our institutions, sustaining the flame to move past transitional, reactionary policies to deliver deep, systemic reconciliation. To accomplish that, we’ll need the currencies of politics: money, message, and majority.

The next generation of leadership in Texas will either collect and lead that majority or will have had a hand in dismantling its potential. It’s up to us which side of history we’re on.

To deliver, we need to develop a deeper understanding of the existing causes and cases of systemic inequity, establish effective methods to ferret them out where they roost, and legislate permanent improvements to policy and policymaking to ensure, once and for all, true equity in our government, our financial and health institutions, our infrastructure, our schools, and our country.

We also have to be bold and direct in calling out institutional inequity where we see it, whether enshrined in policy or manifested in existing leadership. This isn’t always easy but, as the late Congressman John Lewis taught us, it’s always — always — necessary.

Earlier this week, I joined my colleagues on the African-American Lawyers Section of the State Bar of Texas in censuring the President of the State Bar on his careless, insensitive, and inaccurate characterization of the phrase “Black Lives Matter.”

The leader of any organization must be held to its highest standard, particularly when that standard has been set to ensure that all Americans are provided the dignity and respect guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The full letter can be read here.

While we may have lost confidence in one leader, I retain the highest confidence that our system can be repaired and repurposed to use equity as our core metric and central purpose. Accomplishing that will ensure that the pandemic’s impact is an open, not a closing door.

Let’s keep talking. And let’s start leading the way to a safer, more unified future.