Gearing up to work for racial equity

Over the coming months, DemocracySpace will periodically include news about Communities Creating Racial Equity. This exciting new initiative - a project of the Study Circles Resource Center, soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy - will help eight communities across the United States "create and sustain public engagement and community change on issues around racial equity."

With SCRC's assistance (and funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and C.S. Mott Foundation), the communities will work to reduce persistent inequality among racial and ethnic groups that show up in education, housing, health care, the justice system, immigration, and jobs. Participating communities also will form a national network and meet together twice (in spring 2008 and spring 2009) to learn from one another.

SCRC staff involved in the program had a webinar today to get updates on key aspects of the program, which is designed to pull together all the tools and ideas SCRC has gathered over a decade-and-a-half of helping communities move to talk about and then take action to create greater racial equity. For example, each community will work with a biracial team of SCRC staff and associates who will visit the community and lend support to community efforts. But even before the partners visit their communities, they will work together to honestly share and hold each other accountable for viewing and doing their work through "a racial equity lens."

Within the communities, SCRC/Everyday Democracy teams will help communities build multiracial leadership, assess current levels of racial equity, and work toward ever greater awareness of anti-racist practices. No matter is too small: For example, organizers will be asked to review meeting times and places to make them as welcoming as possible to people from all racial and ethnic groups.

SCRC staff and associates will also be standing ready to help the participating communities document their work and share their stories with the wider world. Each community will be asked to designate a communications liaison. SCRC staff will help the liaisons approach their local media, use online tools to tell their stories, and help share their experiences with other communities both within and outside the network.

Some of the community teams have already launched their work. Click here to read an article on how Stratford, Connecticut, plans to use a CCRE grant to take a proactive approach to racial tensions, and click here to learn more about CCRE and all the communities involved. If you'd like to hold a dialogue-to-change program in your own community, click here to order or download a copy of Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation.

Comments

[Martha McCoy]

Thanks, Julie. We at SCRC are really pleased that this initiative is happening NOW. With growing disparities and tensions in so many places, the need is great. We're ready to learn with the communities of this initiative (and with others we're working with), and anxious to share what we learn. Our internal organizational work on racial equity will help ground our assistance and learning -- and our accountability to a vision of communities that work for everyone.

In light of yesterday's reminders of Dr. King's vision, we hope that people who may feel daunted by the challenges they face will take heart that change is possible, and that they'll tap into our resources and adapt them to meet their needs.