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Regular thoughts on the human condition and corporate social responsibility by the CEO of a "for-benefit"company.
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Our company is celebrating "Diversity Week" this week with a host of activities and educational encounters. Today, one of our youn guys, Dan Baum, wrote the following note to all our staff. It's terrific and I wanted to share it with you: "Hi everybody, Today, while Angela, Alexi, Denise, Chris and John go visit the new Greensboro Museum, I want to remind you all to sign up for the pot luck on Friday and share with you the story of the South’s first integrated college basketball game, known now as the “Secret Game.” North Carolina is college basketball country, so it’s fitting that the South’s first integrated game would take place here. In 1944, the NCCU basketball team made...
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I could barely see the podium or the big screen last week in Washington, DC. It's not because we weren't close enough to either... in fact, we were pretty darn close to the action. It's because I couldn't stop crying the whole time. From Aretha (what a hat...!) to Reverend Lowery ("Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen...") the experience was transformational. I was honored and excited to be able to attend, of course, but I was not prepared for the emotion of the event. I have met Mr. Obama and I've been inspired by his words on many occasions. Jennifer and I were there in Denver on that beautiful August evening when he accepted his party's nomination...
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The war is coming to a close. There are deep divisions in the US between hawks and doves, between blacks and whites, between those who want the firm hand of a central government and those who believe in the autonomy of the states, between those who support the President and those in opposition. It is 1865. In Washington, DC, March 4 of that year is gray and blustery... not exactly the kind of day Abraham Lincoln had in mind for his second inauguration. Still, with the Civil War drawing to an end, there is hope and joy among the enormous crowds -- made up of wealthy Northern businessmen, a huge contingent of the Union Army, the entire US Government... the victors. Soon, they will have triumphed...
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Today we celebrate the life and contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King... now viewed -- in the words of biographer Harvard Sitkoff -- as "a moderate, respectable ally of Presidents and a facile spokesperson for the American Dream." Indeed, virtually every modern presidential candidate invokes the image of Dr. King as as model of peaceful, incremental change. This view is wrong and dangerous. 40 years ago, Dr. King's agenda was radical, not moderate. He preached the need for cataclysmic change. He was hated by many in the population, especially by the FBI and state and local governments all across the South. He was attacked, discredited, sent to jail and, finally, murdered. And...
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In the last couple of years, encouraged by an unending stream of celebrities, we finally began to respond to the horrific human catastrophe in Darfur. Apparently, the murders of as many as 500,000 people, countless rapes and some 2.5 million refugees was enough for even the US to pronouce the situation a "genocide." Now, the worst of it appears to be over, thank God. Unfortunately, those numbers don't appear to create a "benchmark" for global response. At the very same time, and even as I write this, the situation on the ground is worse, much worse, in Congo. According to a report today in the Chicago Tribune, the violence, disease and starvation accompanying the ongoing...
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