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November: A Time for Gratitude
Gratitude by Veronique Wibaux
“To love your country is to desire to see it become the best version of itself, to point out its failures, to recognize how we each have been complicit in allowing its worst to persist, to work together to create a community in which every resident has all that they need — love, food, shelter, health, peace, prosperity — and are truly treated as equals in every regard.”

Expressing Gratitude through our Fight for Equity

by Gaby M. Rojas
November is always set aside as a time for gratitude.

We sit at tables loaded with food, family, and friends and share what we are grateful for. This gratitude is so often seen with such finality.

We say, 'I received this raise and now I am full of gratitude, I received this gift, this event occurred and now I'm full of gratitude'. But what if we stopped seeing gratitude as static? What if we see gratitude, not as something we feel when receiving a gift, but as a gift we give others?

Those of us seeking to create more room for equity and well-being in the U.S. are often seen as ungrateful. We're told, 'if you don't like it here, you can leave!'. But seeking to improve our nation isn't ungrateful. It's about giving gratitude.

Those of us seeking to change America for the better are writing a thank you card. We are writing our love into our work. We are saying 'I received the gift of this nation, and I want to repay the favor by making it the best it can be'.

This month, let your work be your thank you card. Let you work be a love letter to your community, to those around you, to those across the country, to those who don't agree with you.

We hope that this newsletter gives you the resources you need to show the gratitude you feel, whatever it is.
News Articles
COVID Vaccines Are This Year’s Thanksgiving Conflict 

This article from the New York TImes describes this year’s holiday struggle: whether or not to spend time with unvaccinated family members. Vaccine hesitancy is still a problem keeping many families apart.
November: Welcome to Native American Heritage Month

November is Native American Heritage Month. This article is from Native News Online and outlines the origins of the month, how to celebrate it, and why we need it.
Videos
Made in America: A GoDaddy Series

This documentary series from GoDaddy.com outlines what it’s like to be an entrepreneur in America.

For entrepreneurs in underserved communities, making it takes extraordinary resilience, resourcefulness and drive. Made in America spotlights entrepreneurs who lace up, show up and remind us what being self-made really means.

Podcasts
The Gratitude Podcast
Georgian Benta

“Thanksgiving is a habit, not just a day.” 

This podcast, from Georgian Benta, is all about inspiring others to practice gratitude through spirituality and personal development.

This podcast is the perfect way to find gratitude in the simplest moments in your life.  
Poetry to Build Equity
"O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!"

-Excerpt from Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes
Bright Spots
Best boss ever? Spanx CEO Gives All Employees First-Class Plane Tickets and $10,000

In an incredible showing of gratitude toward her employees, Spanx CEO Sarah Blakely celebrated the $1 billion sale of her company by rewarding each of her employees with 2 first class tickets to wherever they want to go and $10,000. 

May more CEOs take after Blakely and show their workers the gratitude they deserve. 
Resources and Tools to Build Equity
Mental Health is...Gratitude

This guide from the University of Boulder explains how practicing gratitude in your life can affect your mental health, and gives tips on how to use gratitude to cope with difficult situations in life.
Gratitude | How Right Now

This guide from the CDC shows, not only how to practice gratitude in your life, but gives examples of how you can show civic gratitude for your greater community. 
Join the Conversation
The Power to Shift a System

This webinar is based around power shifting in a system: who has the power, who can shift it, and how we can do it. 
Fall WIN Week 2021

The WIN Network is very proud to announce our WIN Week: Joy, Hope and Resistance, starting December 8th. 

We move into this WIN Week hoping to fill it with as much joyful renewal as possible and we hope your presence will help us fill that space.