Rise/Come Together
Today began like most days: I laced up my beaten-up yellow running shoes, strapped on my iPhone-laden arm band, and set out on my neighborhood run. If you know anything about me, it’s that music is a prime source of motivation, and I typically oscillate between the driving beats of the Disco Biscuits or the soaring jams of Phish to push me over the roads and hills that define my route. Today, I settled on a LivePhish mix somewhere in the middle of a 20+ minute Tweezer.
About two miles into my run, the familiar beat of a newer song started up, leading right into the opening verse:
The ocean is only a lot of drops of water
And the land is only a lot of grains of sand
And the people of the world all love the way
We going to break down the walls one day
And come together, come together, come together
How is that we view the world and what is our place in? What obligation do we owe to our neighbors and to those with different backgrounds from us? What are the ties that bind us together? The song continued:
From high above we're all the same down here
Without a map, the lines all disappear
We're so tired of our senseless fight
The one thing we can all do right
Is come together, come together, come together, come together
Come together
I don’t remember the first time I heard this song, but the message bouncing around in my synapses, often emerges as a hum while I ponder my days events. The covid-19 pandemic has forced all of us to reaffirm our local bonds and really think how our actions and decisions actually impact other people. The value of strong community organizations, especially those that serve more at-risk communities have really been put on display.
As I finished the run, I thought about the day ahead. I would be traveling to Boston on behalf of my client gopuff to present a check to the Upham’s Corner Health Center (UCHC), in support of their efforts to serve their neighborhood's healthcare needs. Uphams Corner is located in the heart of Dorchester and is home to a diverse community of residents, some of whom are the most vulnerable to the virus as a result of health and economic disparities.
UCHC and its CEO Jagdeep Trivedi have been at the forefront of health equity for a long time. Trivedi knew that his community faced challenges with vaccinations and worked with his partners at the Brigham and Strand Theatre to bring more capacity to the neighborhood.
This innovative problem provided a perfect nexus between Uphams and gopuff’s Health Care Support Initiative, committed to ”giving back to local organizations making a great positive impact on their community in response to COVID-19"
This connection between gopuff and Uphams goes to the heart of the 27 South Strategies ethos: we work with our clients to support their business and the communities that they serve. We know that we are best when we all Rise Up and Come Together.
I wonder what tomorrow’s soundtrack will inspire.
