An LT Meeting Leads to Collaboration
In March 2022, Sean Goode, Executive Director of CHOOSE 180 was one of our guest speakers during Leadership Tomorrow’s Health and Wellbeing Challenge Day. I was privileged to facilitate a conversation with Sean and Dr. Ben Danielson about the power of turning problems into possibilities. We continued our conversation after the Challenge Day, identifying shared goals and missions, and a desire to support each other’s work. One outcome was a shared trip to learn from history. In November 2022, Sankofa Impact’s Community Relations Manager, Nathan Bean (LT‘23), Sean, and I traveled to Germany and the American South.
Our time in Germany centered on studying the liquidation and extermination of the Jewish people during World War II and uncovering the connections to the Jim Crow South and the Pacific Northwest. The trip required endurance and a strong desire to lean into painful history. Somehow, we managed to laugh often, grow together, and experience culture at a moment when drawing connections between these histories is of vital importance.
Our first full day in Germany, we visited Dachau concentration camp and learned about the horrors committed there when it was in operation. We drew comparisons to places like Minidoka, ID, where my grandfather was interned during World War II. On our third day, we traveled to Nuremberg and stood at the site of the rally grounds for the Nazi party. It was beyond chilling to occupy space where Adolph Hitler stood. We noted the conspicuous absence of statues celebrating Nazi leaders, unlike the South which remains home to countless statues celebrating Confederate leaders.
On our fifth day, we journeyed by train to Berlin and stood in sobering awe at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, reminiscent of similar feelings we have felt at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL. We learned how Nazis studied “Black codes” in the South and our forced removal of indigenous people to subjugate the Jewish people and others during their time in power. There were frankly more connections than we could have anticipated.
On one of our last days, we visited the House of the Wannsee Conference, twenty minutes outside of Berlin. This stop was immensely powerful for us. This is the lakeside villa where Nazis planned the accelerated annihilation of European Jews, now a memorial museum. One of the artifacts on display are the 15 pages of meeting minutes in which the “final solution” is outlined. We were struck by the banality. Seeing the words. The simple plan of it all. The humanity and lack thereof. It was moving beyond words. A reminder that oppression is oppression. That across cultures and atrocities, there are horrors that not only repeat, but rhyme. There are acts of resistance that demonstrate the resilience of a people. There is so much to be learned when we shed and celebrate differences.
After our week in Germany, we boarded a plane from Munich to New Orleans, where the CHOOSE 180 staff of 25 employees met us to begin our Pilgrimage to the South. Our charter bus carried the group through key places in the Black American freedom struggle and we met foot soldiers and activists of today.
We visited the Whitney Plantation, where we confronted the stark history of enslavement and its continued aftereffects. We moved through the Mississippi Delta and stood on sacred ground as we remembered the young and tragic life of Emmett Till. We visited cultural sites like Dooky Chase’s restaurant, Stax Records, and even took the group to a private screening of Wakanda Forever. This journey with folks who are working to transform the criminal legal system was eye-opening and challenging. It was an honor to create moments of transformation for those who are transforming our world.
I have often reflected on the way Germany asks its students to learn and interrogate what happened during World War II. There were countless student groups at Dachau. Our guide in Nuremberg talked about how all students must visit a concentration camp before graduating high school. The Stolpersteine project, in Berlin especially, means one can scarcely walk a block without being reminded of the past by the small plaques that detail the lives disrupted because of the Holocaust. This has been largely driven by a mix of public and private sector interest and government mandated curriculum changes.
We wonder how things might look in the United States if we were to approach our shared history in a similar way? What if, instead of banning books and AP classes, our young people were required to visit places like Montgomery? What if we sought to memorialize the loss and family separation of Black people in America? How might reconciliation and reparation look if we all shared a common memory? Of course, we wonder what role organizations like Sankofa Impact, Choose 180, and Leadership Tomorrow can play in all this? The answers to these questions are within all who choose to ask them. We must be the force that drives change for good. For what is right. It is our responsibility to ensure the liberation of all people.
These journeys through Germany and the South with CHOOSE 180 were hugely impactful. I am proud of our partnership with Sean and CHOOSE 180 and grateful to Leadership Tomorrow for bringing our two organizations and missions together.
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Felicia Ishino is the Executive Director of Sankofa Impact and an alum of Leadership Tomorrow, Class of 2021.