If that is where we begin, then I have another question.
What are we in this world?
Because somewhere between being born equal in human worth and becoming adults navigating this world, we begin acquiring labels. Poor. Wealthy. Educated. Uneducated. Successful. Troubled. Professional. Criminal. Homeless. Homeowner. Addict. Mother. Father. Welfare recipient. Taxpayer. Employee. Unemployed. Some labels describe something about us. Others slowly begin to define us.
And I wonder: Who creates that narrative? Who has decided what success looks like? Who decided that the person working two jobs and still unable to pay rent has somehow failed, while the systems surrounding that person escape the same scrutiny? Who decided which neighborhoods are “good,” which families are “broken,” which jobs deserve dignity, or which mistakes a person should carry for the rest of their life?
And maybe even more importantly when did we start believing those stories ourselves?
We are shaped by our families and communities, certainly. But we are also shaped by schools, employers, government, religion, media, history, economics and public policy. We are shaped by the opportunities placed in front of us and the barriers placed in our way. None of us arrive at adulthood untouched by those things.
That doesn’t mean we have no responsibility for our choices. We absolutely do. Our choices matter. But choices don’t happen in a vacuum. It is much easier to tell someone to “make better choices” than to ask what choices were actually available to them.
That distinction matters. At Mosaic Alliance, we spend a lot of time with people whose lives have already been narrated by somebody else. A case file says one thing. An employer sees something else. A credit score tells another story. A criminal record tells one. An address can tell one. So can the clothes someone wears, the way they speak, the school they attended, the family they came from, or the amount of money in their bank account.
Because perhaps the better question isn’t, what are these people lacking? Perhaps it is: What story have we been telling about them? And what changes when they get to tell their own? If we truly believe that every human being begins with equal worth, then our work cannot be about assigning people value. The value was already there. Our work is to build communities and systems capable of seeing it.
And that requires us to ask, who is in the room? When the agenda was created. When the problem was defined. When priorities were chosen. When someone decided what a community needed.
We talk a lot about giving people a voice. But I’m beginning to think that’s the wrong phrase. People already have voices. The real question is whether anyone with power is listening and whether the people most affected by a decision have any meaningful opportunity to shape it. There is a big difference between asking someone what they think and allowing what they think to influence what happens next.
We can invite residents to a meeting after the agenda has already been written.
We can conduct a survey after the priorities have already been chosen. We can hold a focus group after funding has already been allocated. We can ask people to tell us their stories and then return to our conference rooms and decide what those stories mean. Technically, we included community voice.
But did we share any power? That question makes things a little more uncomfortable. And maybe it should. Because the people sitting around decision-making tables are often good people trying very hard to solve complicated problems. They bring education, professional experience, data, resources and expertise. Those things matter. But there is another kind of expertise. There is the expertise of trying to find childcare when you work second shift. There is the expertise of trying to get across town when you don’t have a car and the bus doesn’t run when your shift ends. There is the expertise of navigating a system that makes perfect sense on paper and almost no sense when you’re the person trying to use it.
That is expertise too. And when it isn’t represented in the room, we shouldn’t be surprised when our solutions don’t quite work outside of it. We create programs people can’t access. Services people don’t know exist. Requirements that unintentionally create another barrier. Solutions to problems people weren’t actually asking us to solve. And then sometimes we wonder why people don’t participate.
Maybe participation isn’t always the problem. Maybe sometimes design is the problem.
At Mosaic Alliance, we believe the people closest to the challenges also carry knowledge about the solutions. That doesn’t mean that lived experience replaces professional expertise, data, research or good policy. It means the picture is incomplete without it. The strongest tables need both. And bringing people into those spaces isn’t always neat.
People who haven’t spent their careers sitting in meetings may not speak our professional language. They may challenge assumptions we’ve grown comfortable with. They may ask questions we hadn’t considered. They may even tell us that the thing we’ve spent months developing isn’t what they need.
Good. Because if the only voices at the table are people who understand how the system works, we may become very good at improving the system for the people who already know how to navigate it.
Real community voices ask something more of us. It means residents aren’t simply invited in to react to our ideas. They help identify the problem. They help set the agenda. They help imagine the solution. And when possible, they help decide what happens next.
So, the next time we gather around a table to talk about poverty, housing, childcare, employment, education, child welfare, transportation or any issue affecting people’s lives maybe before we open the agenda, we should look around the room.
Who is here?
Who isn’t?
Who helped decide what we’re talking about?
And whose life will be affected by what we decide?