The time for change is long overdue.
George Floyd was killed by a police officer while he was in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ahmaud Arbery was chased down and shot by three white men while he was out for a run in South Georgia. Breonna Taylor was killed by police while she was sleeping in her own bed in Louisville, Kentucky. Elijah McClain died after being tackled and detained by police as he was walking home from a convenience store in Aurora, Colorado. Even closer to home, Zayd Atkinson was interrogated at gunpoint by a police officer in Boulder after being stopped for picking up trash in front of his home, though he survived to speak of the racism that fueled the encounter.
These recent events have led to a moment of reckoning for us as individuals and as a society, a moment we believe requires us to reflect on the history of racism in our nation and in our communities. The protests that have erupted in responses to these deaths, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, have shone a sorely needed light on racial injustice and systemic racism in our policing, in our health care, and throughout our communities. It requires us to acknowledge this history, its reverberating impacts, and our individual roles in perpetuating systems of injustice. We mourn the lives unjustly lost, and we join the chorus to say, loudly and clearly, that Black Lives Matter.
As a firm, HBC supports our clients and our communities of color, and we value diversity, equity and inclusivity. We will continue to work to root out injustice and do our part to end systemic racism through our work and our advocacy.
Historically, however, we have fallen short on translating these values into changing the overall racial makeup of our firm. Today, we are recommitting ourselves to inclusion and to removing barriers that serve to exclude. We are evaluating the ways in which people of color have been systemically excluded from our community of Boulder, Colorado, from our firm, and from the legal profession more broadly. We are determined to find ways to include new and diverse voices in our legal team so to best serve our clients and our community.
This painful moment calls us not to turn towards the comfort of the status quo but to reflect honestly on our collective history and to take steps to ensure a future where “opportunity and justice for all” is not merely an ideal but a reality. HBC will be engaging in this difficult and important work. We look forward to partnering with many in our community to do so and sharing our progress and learning along the way.