“Can’t Stop. Won’t Wait.”

Reflections on the importance of taking action.

“There are four words young people are told when proposing something new,” explained Aaron Jenkins, Executive Director of Operation Understanding DC and guest facilitator at the LearnServe Fellows’ winter retreat.  “Those four words are:  Can’t.  Stop.  Wait.  Don’t.”

Reality, it seems, often threatens to overtake possibility.  Our minds quickly zoom to all the reasons why a new idea won’t work (and there are always many!), hasn’t worked in the past, or might provoke devastating, unforeseen consequences.

Some entrepreneurs have the luxury of testing their ideas away from the public spotlight, debuting their new products and technologies when they are ready to launch.  Even they face lingering doubts — Can’t.  Stop.  Wait.  Don’t. — from within, and from their community of close confidants.

For many social entrepreneurs, activists, and movement leaders those voices of caution are often louder and the stakes are higher.

Franklin McCain, a 1959 graduate of DC’s Eastern High School, was 19 years old when he and three classmates from North Carolina A&T decided to challenge the state’s Jim Crow laws by sitting in at the whites-only Woolworth lunch counter in downtown Greensboro.  “If I were lucky, I would go to jail for a long, long time,” McCain reflected in an interview published in his recent obituary printed in The Washington Post.  “If I were not so lucky, I would come back to campus, but in a pine box.”

Like many Civil Rights activists, McCain and his peers understood the personal consequences of speaking out.  And they heard the voices of caution — from black neighbors and white, from political leaders and community members — not to stir trouble.  Can’t.  Stop.  Wait.  Don’t.

But they also understood the urgency of the cause.  “We finally felt we were being hypocritical because we were doing the same thing that everyone else had done, nothing,” McCain recalled.  “Up to then, we were armchair activists.”

Thanks to the efforts of the Greensboro Four, Woolworths integrated its lunch counter in July 1960.  Their highly publicized efforts inspired student-led sit-ins nation-wide — as well as the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Observing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day we celebrate not only the legacy of Dr. King, but also the courage and persistence of the Greensboro Four, SNCC, and all the leaders, activists, and organizations who championed the cause for civil rights.

I am inspired by their decision to take action — in spite of the personal risk, in spite of political admonitions to slow down, in spite of lingering doubts as to whether their efforts would ever be effective.  Anger at injustice was not sufficient; change requires action.

Similarly I am inspired by our LearnServe Fellows’ commitment to action in the face of an imperfect world.  Perhaps the personal risks are less for high school and college leaders today working in the United States, but the chorus of  “Can’t.  Stop.  Wait.  Don’t.” can be just as loud.

How can we keep that chorus in check, so that the realities of today don’t hold back the possibility of tomorrow?

With a message that applies equally to the urgency of activism and the excitement of entrepreneurship, Emily Harper — a 2014 LearnServe Fellow from Annandale High School — reframed those cautionary words into a call to action: “Can’t Stop.  Won’t Wait.”  Let’s start.

  ~ Scott Rechler — Director and CEO, LearnServe International

Source: “Franklin McCain, who helped inspire sit-ins for civil rights as part of the Greensboro Four, dies.“  By Emily Langer, The Washington Post.  January 13, 2014.

With appreciation: Aaron Jenkins, Executive Director of Operation Understanding DC.  Emily Harper, LearnServe Fellow, Annandale High School.