Event addresses hopes for widening scope of diversity

On a day celebrating diversity on a national scale, a smaller group of students, activists and a congresswoman gathered in a Geneva church sanctuary to game plan ways to be deliberately inclusive in their everyday activities.

For Lauren Underwood, the newly elected Democrat representing the 14th Congressional District, that means engaging constituents who've felt underrepresented and disconnected from the country they live in. Underwood said she was taken aback on the campaign trail when she'd include displays of the American flag and find people who with a wide range of feelings about it.

"They would share that they felt like the flag was for other people," Underwood said. "That it wasn't their flag, and it didn't represent us and our country or maybe their experiences here. That was very concerning to me."

Underwood's response was to field as diverse of a campaign team as she could find. As the elected representative, she said the next step is maintaining a presence in every county in the district. The traditional approach is to locate a single district office in central Kane County, the geographic center of the 14th Congressional map. That's not her plan.

"If we have it located in Geneva or Batavia, we are really only serving Kane County," she said. "Kane County, compared to some others, is fairly well served. We want to reach out and engage folks who haven't seen services in a long time."

Underwood also called on the people who elected her to maintain their dedication to creating a community.

"That's one of the things I'm, quite candidly, worried about," she said. "We spend two years building a community. Now because we were successful people want to go home and think that the job is done. It's not. We have to have the whole community with us along the journey."

For Samantha Taylor, a student at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, her mission is to extend her concept of diversity to include, not just people of different races and cultures, but also those with different political views. Taylor said most of the students and staff a fairly liberal at the Aurora-based boarding school.

"A lot of the conservatives on campus felt like their views were being silenced," Taylor said. "That was interesting for me. We have to take into account that even though we don't agree with certain ideas, inclusivity is still inclusivity. Everyone should be involved regardless if you believe in their views."

DuPage NAACP President Michael Childress said one of his missions going forward is to find ways to include younger people in his organization. That starts with being able to communicate with them in their own language. Childress described a sense of being out of touch with young people when he recently learned Facebook is considered to be social media for old people. He wants to create a focus group of younger people he can regularly tap into.

"We have to understand the language of the millennials and learn how to communicate in those terms," Childress said. "Otherwise, eventually we'll just be talking to each other."

The event was hosted by the Wheaton-based HOPE Fair Housing Center. It was only the second Martin Luther King Jr. event put on by the organization. The idea is to engage people, particularly area youth, in discussions about equality and diversity on a day they otherwise have off from school.