Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti once wrote that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way is to tell their story and start with “secondly.”
I have been thinking about that idea often because history is full of stories that begin too late. Many Americans were introduced to Juneteenth only after it became a federal holiday in 2021, despite generations of Black communities preserving and celebrating that history for more than 150 years. Many are unaware that some of the earliest Memorial Day observances were organized by formerly enslaved Black Americans honoring Union soldiers after the Civil War.
The pattern is familiar. We inherit the memory while forgetting the people who carried it.
When we start the story with “secondly,” we lose more than historical facts. We lose stories. We lose the story of the people who preserved Juneteenth when much of the country looked away. We lose the story of formerly enslaved Black Americans who honored the dead before Memorial Day became a national tradition. We lose the stories of Black women whose labor sustained families, communities, and economies, even as their own lives were too often reduced to the work they performed.
One of the lessons history teaches us is that erasure rarely begins with forgetting. It begins with reduction. We reduce people to a single role, a single moment or a single chapter. Over time, the fuller story disappears.
The same lesson applies to communities. People often tell us where to look. The question is whether we are willing to follow their gaze.
That is one of the most important lessons I learned through my work with the Massey Commission.
In the months since the Commission released its final report, I have watched people debate individual recommendations. Some support them. Some oppose them. Some want them implemented immediately. Others have questions about cost, authority or feasibility. Those conversations are part of public life. But they also risk beginning the story with “secondly.”
Before there were Calls to Action, there were people. Before there were recommendations, there were witnesses. Yet even that tells the story too late.
The commission’s workgroups on mental health, public safety, economic disparities and community education were not created in a vacuum. They existed because community members pointed us in those directions. Again and again, people identified concerns that had been overlooked, minimized or treated as isolated incidents. In many ways, they were telling us, “Look here. You never look here.”
The Calls to Action emerged from that invitation. We called them Calls to Action for a reason. A call assumes someone has something important to say. An action is what happens when we take that message seriously and keep our eyes on what people were asking us to see.
As some in this community know, I am no stranger to grief. I have lost a son whose story did not get the ending I hoped for. One of the hardest lessons grief teaches is that the deepest grief is not only the loss of a person. It is the loss of the stories that person would have gone on to tell.
Perhaps that is why I think so often about witnessing.
Quaker educator Parker Palmer writes that the human soul does not want to be fixed. It wants to be seen and accompanied. Communities are no different. Before we can act, we must learn to witness. Before we can solve problems, we must be willing to see people.
For me, that includes Sonya Massey.
Many people know the circumstances of her death. Far fewer know the fullness of her life. Sonya was a mother, a daughter, a friend, a neighbor and a community member. Like all of us, she was more than the worst thing that happened to her.
The same is true of the people who shared their experiences with the commission. Their stories were not data points. They were acts of witness. They were efforts to help this community see itself more clearly.
The report is finished, but the work is not. Across Sangamon County, community members continue gathering to learn, heal and imagine what comes next. Through Healing Illinois workshops and other community conversations, we continue asking many of the same questions that emerged throughout the commission’s work: What are we seeing? What are we missing? Whose stories have we not yet heard?
The future of our community will not be determined solely by whether every recommendation is adopted exactly as written. It will be shaped by our willingness to keep listening, keep learning, and keep telling fuller stories about one another.
The Calls to Action were never the beginning of the story. They were our attempt to answer what witnesses, families, and community members had been asking us to see all along.
Dr. Kelly Hurst is a board member of the Springfield Immigrant Advocacy Network. She is an educator, facilitator and community leader in Springfield. Dr. Hurst served as managing director of the Massey Commission and facilitates Healing Illinois workshops focused on community healing, storytelling and understanding how the conditions beneath the surface shape the outcomes we see.
This article appears in June 11-17, 2026.
