Over 600 GARE racial equity practitioners gathered online from November 1-2, 2023, for Governing for Racial Justice, GARE’s 2023 Membership Meeting. The two-day event included plenary sessions, artists and cultural workers, a keynote conversation with adrienne maree brown as well as breakout sessions and network mixers to foster connections and share knowledge across geographic regions and thematic areas.
Day One opened with T.C. Broadnax, City Manager, City of Dallas, and Shireen Malekfzali, Chief Equity Officer, County of San Mateo, County’s Executive Office, who welcomed attendees with inspiring words about the importance of network and community as we advance racial equity work in government.
Shoshana Brown, US Director of Training and Pedagogy, and Diana Dvora Falchuk, Senior Advisor, both of Diaspora Alliance shared the mainstage with Linda Sarsour, Executive Director of MPower Change to reflect on the immense grief, pain, and horror at the escalating violence in Palestine/Israel, that the UN warns is amounting to the genocide of Palestinians after decades of apartheid policies. The speakers noted the increase in Islamophobic violence and anti-Semitic hate crimes in the U.S., underscoring the situation’s connections to local and regional government practitioners, and encouraged racial equity practitioners to follow the examples of cities like Providence, RI, and Richmond, CA, and join the calls for a ceasefire. Speakers highlighted the historical significance of Jewish and Palestinian solidarity work and echoed global calls urging a ceasefire. This important conversation and peer-to-peer connections will continue on November 15 – GARE members should log into the GARE Network portal to RSVP for the event.
Poet, social critic, and educator, Darius V. Daughtry performed “Trouble the Waters,” a powerful spoken word poem commissioned for the GARE membership:
Who will speak and do
when it is no longer convenient?
when it is less trendy, and they send
the wolves after you in the form of friends and colleagues?
Next, GARE program leadership, Gordon Goodwin, Senior Director, Marsha Guthrie, Deputy Director of Network Strategies, and Dr. Raintry Salk, Deputy Director of Transformative Strategies, hosted “Rumor Has It,” a fishbowl conversation on the state of GARE – where it has been, and the progress of GARE’s programmatic redesign and implementation over the last several months. The session closed with a brief Q&A moderated by Cathy Albisa, Vice President of Institutional and Sectoral Change at Race Forward. Nadia Mohamed, GARE Director of Network Narrative and Communication, and Sarah Lawton, GARE Director of Online Community offered a sneak peek into GARE’s brand refresh which will include a new look and feel, newly designed website, and online community space where network members and practitioners can continue to meet, connect, and share resources.
The first plenary, “Our Common Future: Celebrating Racial Equity through Preservation”, brought together racial equity experts and cultural preservationists including Denisa Gilmore, Senior Director, City of Birmingham Division of Social Justice and Racial Equity; Michael Hill, Landscape Architect, Enterprise Program, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service; Michael Allen, Former Community Partnership Specialist, U.S. National Park Service (retired); Xusana Davis, Executive Director of Racial Equity, State of Vermont; and Monica Rhodes, Cultural Preservationist, Rhodes Heritage Group to discuss how to approach preservation and cultural celebration with a racial equity lens and explore solutions that balance economic development with sustainable management of cultural assets. Panelists reflected on this “100-year work” as an avenue to engage with our history and future, thoughtfully build capacity, and elevate the expertise of communities while increasing cultural competency.
Continuing to explore the theme of past and future, author and artist, adrienne maree brown, offered creative, compassionate, and honest reflections in “Building Sustainability and Resiliency for Our Work and Our Movements,” a keynote conversation moderated by Cecilia Olusola Tribble, GARE Director of Innovative Practice. “We hold so many worlds inside of us, so many futures, it is our responsibility to plant these worlds, as seeds for the type of justice we want and need,” they noted in explaining how the work of organizing, like science fiction, must imagine future worlds. Brown encouraged local government practitioners to take their work very seriously and concluded with the heartening reminder that “there is a ‘before’ – most of human history has not been spent in colonialism, racism, misogyny, and our work is to ensure that it is the shortest era of humanity.”
Attendees participated in breakout sessions and networking mixers throughout the two days of the conference. Popular breakout sessions included:
- Leveraging Community Participation and Power to Advance Racial Justice, a panel discussion on developing practices that elevate attention to race and actively engage authentic participation of communities of color in government planning and decision-making.
- Not Your Traditional Policy Approach – Redefining a Win for Our Communities invited participants to rethink the traditional local policy process and engage communities in co-creating policy.
- Driving Accountability for Equitable Progress used a case study of Chicago to explore how jurisdictions can create systems of accountability and increase public support through community engagement.
Regional meetups during the first day allowed practitioners to connect with practitioners in their geographic regions to foster future collaboration, build relationships, and strengthen inter-regional networks for racial equity. During Day Two of the conference, practitioners joined issue area networking mixers such as housing, public health, and community safety as well as a mixer for state government practitioners.
In addition to discussions and workshops, the Membership Meeting was an opportunity to highlight the powerful role of arts and culture in advancing a just, multiracial democracy. Over two days, the meeting featured performances by KaNikki Jakarta, the first Black Poet Laureate of Alexandria, Virginia, Nzingah Oniwosan, multi-disciplinary artist, Taalam Acey, spoken word artist, and an interview with Harold Caudio a Haitian-American mixed-media artist and designer.
For the second and final plenary, “DEI & the Essential R: Emphasizing Race & Insisting on Results in this Season of Pushback,” Dr. Lindsey Wilson, Director of the Office on Equity and Inclusion (City of Dallas), Samia Byrd, Chief Race and Equity Officer (Arlington County), and Jessie Ulibarri Co-Executive Director of the State Innovation Exchange joined Gordon Goodwin, GARE Senior Director, for a conversation that explored how we can shift systems, analyzing policies and procedures. Panelists discussed the challenges of moving jurisdictions from a basic understanding of racial equity to translating it into resource allocation and investment in improved outcomes for communities of color. Speakers emphasized the power of disaggregated data, the importance of being race-explicit, and the role of building trust and relationships internally and with communities. Citing the value of support and resources like the GARE approach, Samia Byrd concluded, “There is always going to be pushback. Always. And that is a place we just have to be comfortable standing in.”
As the second day drew to a close, Gordon Goodwin and Marsha Guthrie rejoined the stage for a final conversation to reiterate the importance of speaking out in the work of advancing racial equity. “We must just say it. Systemic racism is real. History matters, and we have solutions we must embrace,” Guthrie noted. She invited attendees to reflect on who they are raising their voices for in the movement for racial justice in government and closed with John Lewis’ powerful words, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”