I am Mathur Alire, the Chair of Fargo Human Relations Commission.
The City of Fargo Human Relations Commission, Martin Luther King Jr. annual award, recognized
those who promote respect and acceptance for the diversity and help to eliminate discrimination
and who embody the work of Martin Luther King Jr.
This award recognizes youth, adults, and organizations for their contribution to the City of Fargo
in the area of human rights.
Congratulations to the 2021 winners, Claire Derby, Nola Storm, and Wynn Liberia.
We are so happy and overjoyed for this moment, and I want to extend my attention and appreciation
to the warm, loving people of Fargo, North Dakota for selecting us for this great award.
And also, this award gave me the opportunity to stand in this gap for all other Black immigrant
women and children within the Fargo-Moor area.
The whole idea of what Dr. King stood for was equality to be respected as a human being.
And I do hope and pray that I have tried to live my life to make sure that that's the
case for other people.
I think we're hard-pressed to live up to it as an example, but I do think that my faith
calls me to at least try to make sure that our community is a place where people can
feel safe, can be respected as a human being.
I think thinking about it in terms of climate justice, climate change is a human rights
issue.
It will affect the most marginalized in our communities the hardest.
And also, those communities tend to have the least impact on climate change.
They have the lowest carbon footprint.
What that means for me as someone who comes from a place of privilege is like, how do
I utilize my privilege and give voice to the voiceless and make sure that their needs
are being met?
And that equity is central into our approach of tackling climate change.
How do we build back better?
How do we have a just transition for our workers?
How do we ensure Indigenous sovereignty?
All of those things.
We believe that everybody are included and everybody is supposed to be loved.
So we work with everybody around the Falco Mohe era and our goal is to work with the
whole our lives.
You have a place where you can get out, you can meet other people that you never meet.
I mean, I think of all the people that have met each other at the garden, we've never
had that opportunity.
And once you know somebody who maybe has a skin color different than you or wears clothing
different than you, but you get to know them and you're working together, you build rapport.
And if you can't have a conversation, you start to build a rapport by spending that
time together.
Climate change affects every single aspect of our life.
Every person has a stake in it.
And so I think it's really important to understand where people are coming from and how climate
change will impact their lives and like true solutions to environmental issues is going
to be like a cultural shift.
I also think that inclusion is one of the powerful tools that God use to make the world
a better place for all humankind.
Being included does not mean you just have to have the seat.
It means being welcome and loved by the people on the table, but not just being on the table,
but for your voice to be heard.
Regardless of your gender or your race or your faith, that your input in your community
is as important as the next person's.
That your physical presence in a community is as important as anyone else.
Inclusion I think is a step beyond diversity.
Diversity is having people in the room.
And it's about making sure that they're heard and that they're valued.
And so especially as a white person working in these spaces is making sure that like I'm
listening and taking a step back.
And so when I say that like I try to give voice to the voiceless and like utilizing
my privilege in that way, it's very important that I'm not speaking for these people.
And so it's that balancing act is like how are they included and how do I just create
that space for them instead of speaking for them.
Our organization is here to stay.
So we asked the Fargo City Commission and the City of Fargo and everyone's in the Mohawk
area to actually help empower our work to sustainable and resources that can make us
to have a long-term goal and project be implemented because we are here to stay.
We want to work hard and get to the better place.
But I'm so grateful to how the partnerships in our community has supported us.
So grateful for people who have just supported us and stepped in and and then all the volunteers
as you know the core leaders.
I think awareness is the critical thing in Fargo.
We have these projects from the City of Fargo, the divergent project, the water intake project
that will be starting in a couple of years.
These are climate resiliency problems.
We are looking at both increased flooding and increased drought.
And so the City of Fargo is being very proactive in addressing these issues now.
And I will leave you people with awards from Martin Luther King that says we all may have
come from different ways of life, but now we are on the same boat.
Acceptance is all that we need.
We cannot go forward without us being accepted.
So the fact that the Law for Diversity were able to bring us here, let the Law for Diversity
continue to carry us through.
We want to thank again this year's winners of the Human Relations Commission, Martin
Luther King Jr. Award.
Our community is a better place because of NOAA's lifelong services to Native Americans.
When Liberia commitment to women's and children's and clearer activism in the environment caused
and black lives met, we are grateful for all the work you do in our community to make it
a more welcoming place.
Thank you.