Ignite Lincoln is part of an international event that brings together non-profits and speakers that share stories in fun and engaging ways. To put it in their own words:

Every year, Ignite Lincoln celebrates passion by giving 15 brave souls 5 minutes and 20 slides to talk about their passion. We also celebrate our passion for community by giving away the event’s proceeds to five local nonprofits.

An hour and a half into the event we had seen several non-profits, and even more speakers enlighten us. At about that time, Maggie Stuckey shared one of my favorite talks of the night. She shared the stories of her neighbors so we could see that her neighborhood isn’t full of strangers; rather a diverse collection of people with interesting aspirations and dreams.

After she stepped off the stage, Ignite LNK’s MC cracked a joke about his neighborhood, which happens to be my neighborhood too.

“I live next to ghetto Russ’s. You don’t want to meet my neighbors” “All of my neighbors have either been witnesses or perpetrators at a crime scene somewhere.”

Awesome joke, Ignite Lincoln. It was really cool how you provided an outlet for non-profits and speakers to tell a crowd of mostly affluent white people the importance of things like empathy, understanding, and social connectivity. And more importantly, how those understandings play a vital role in building community, empowering people, and crushing inherent ethnocentric or classist world views in favor of more progressive ones that seek to bridge and unify.

But then you flippantly dismantled that understanding.

After Maggie illustrated the tapestry of her neighborhood by weaving together stories of people, you reminded us that destitute people’s stories mean less. That you can marginalize an entire neighborhood by generalizing them based on looks. That despite hearing the Mr. Roger’s lesson, we can continue to avoid communicating with people who don’t look like us.

After Bryan Seck illustrated the importance of social connectivity to help people out of poverty, you reminded us that the people in poverty aren’t worth connecting to.