These closing remarks were written and delivered in response to a talk with poet and scholar, Clint Smith, followed by a conversation with Laura Belcher, President and CEO of Habitat Charlotte Region and Ju-Don Marshall, President and CEO of WFAE at Habitat for Humanity’s Building Futures Symposium on March 26, 2025.

What an honor to be here, to be together, to be inspired, to be.

What an honor to be with Clint Smith who traveled the South, who traveled the world to learn and to teach.

As Clint Smith has been on a journey, we, all of us, are a journey, too.

We are on a journey to repair… to make amends for historical harm.

We are on a journey to reckoning… with our past to build a better future. Intergenerational hurt requires a commitment to intergenerational healing.

We are on a journey to writing our future – poem by poem.

We are on a journey to building our future – home by home for the unhoused, victims of injustice, generational inequity and iniquity.

We are on a journey to building our future – neighborhood by neighborhood, placemaking.

We need new roads… not paved by hate and named for supremacists who enslaved.

We need streets paved with equity.

We need new roads that bring us together as equals, as family, as siblings, as human beings.

We need a new deal that benefits the BIPOC community (those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color).

We need new roads lined with homes for all… homes filled with love, with humanity, with gratitude, with radical empathy, with safety, with the sanctity of simple moments.

We need homes filled with music and rhythm and abundant reasons for dance.

Photo by Paul Rhsz.