(Madera, California) –
Statement from Valley Children’s Healthcare President and CEO Todd Suntrapak:
The values of Valley Children’s call for us to live by a set of shared standards, driven by excellence, compassion, heart, care for all, and integrity. Those same values also, from time to time, call for us to speak out when we witness events in our community and in our country that violate those principles. We have raised our voice against school shootings, child abuse and gun violence.
The events of the last few days - and the brutal death of George Floyd in Minneapolis - are another such occasion where we cannot stand by. We cannot stand silent.
As we watch the anguish, fear and violence spread across our own community and in cities across this country, it is my hope that each of us will stop for a moment and examine our own conscience and our own limits of acceptance of the injustices we are witnessing. This country was founded on the principle that we are all created equal, that we all deserve a chance to succeed, and that when the rights of one man or woman are diminished, the rights of all men and women are in jeopardy.
It is said that ‘children learn what they live.’ What are our children learning by living through what they are seeing today? As caring adults, we owe it to our children - our community’s children - to show them that there is something greater from adults who care. There is tolerance, acceptance and kindness. They see that every day at Valley Children’s. They deserve to see it in their own neighborhoods, too.
There is no question that the struggle we are seeing is much larger than Valley Children’s Healthcare. Maybe it even seems farther away because much of it is happening somewhere else. But it is also happening right here where we live, every day when there is an injustice expressed because of the color of someone’s skin or where they have come from.
It is contrary to our values as Americans and very clearly contrary to the values of Valley Children’s Healthcare.
If children, in fact, do learn what they live, let us each commit to show them lessons of equality, justice, tolerance and kindness.