Black wealth remains near zero due to centuries of systemic anti-Black racism and is on a trajectory to only worsen. In Seattle, white wealth is nearly 20x more than Black wealth. What specific actions will you take to close the Black-white wealth gap?
How much of the Black-white wealth gap will you close while in office?
Who are you working with in the Black community to close it?
How will you support investing federal funding directly and specifically into the Black community in the next two years?
Answer
Advertising through direct outreach to vendors and agencies of the $25 million in COVID Relief funding for economic development ear marked for BlPOC owned business. Create contracting oversight within the county to increase the access of black owned vendors to all County Request for Proposals, 3 Bid process or other contracting options. Increase and enforce the small contractors clause in all county contracts to ensure that large vendors are not dominating the landscape. Collaborating with State legislatures to increase access to pre-apprenticeship and vocational programs in the K-12 school system with a focus on black student post high school success. Work with college access programs to engage HBCU’s to offer information, tours, and financial aid packages to Black Students. Dismantle the system of hierarchy that sees black people hired at the county but not promoted into management and decision making positions. Create county wide policy the require racial and gender diversity on promotional panels.
Question
There is a crisis in Black health in this region. In King County: Black babies are more 2x more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies; Black birthing people die 3x more than white birthing people; Black residents die of diabetes at 3x the rate of white residents; Nearly half of all Black adults in King County are food insecure; Black adults are 3x more likely to be living in poverty; Black adults are evicted at 6x the rate of white adults; Black people in King County contracted COVID-19 at 3x the rates of whites; and yet Black community received less than 2% of federal relief funding.
This region boasts some of the most sophisticated, renowned hospitals and medical facilities in the world. The disparities in medical treatment received by Black communities are appalling, with COVID-19 serving as just the most recent flashlight into this dark and disturbing reality. What are your specific plans to invest in Black community health?
In the entire Pacific Northwest (OR, WA, ID, MT, WY) there are zero Black community-owned, federally qualified health clinics. What are your specific plans to support base-building Black community-owned clinics? Specifically, the Tubman Center for Health and Freedom (TCHF), Somali Health Board (SHB), Surge Reproductive Justice (SRJ), African American Health Board and more?
Answer
As a council member I would work with County Health officials to develop a monitoring plan that identified barriers to access (insurance, language, etc..) and with agencies to combine county and federal pass through dollars to support the work. I would created incubator systems for Black owned health centers to address FQHC certification and work with them to gain individual certifications. Requiring larger healthcare organizations that use county dollars to subcontract with these agencies to serve patients in a cultural competent and responsive manner.
Question
Equity means ownership. Thriving Black communities require control and agency over land. We prioritize Black land acquisition as a foundational pillar to our work. As demand for land grows at an unprecedented pace, the rapid gentrification, active divestment from, and exclusion of Blacks from Seattle and King County is important not merely due to the dismantling of historical Black cultural and societal spaces, but also the socio-economic, health, wealth, and education fallout resulting from Blacks being pushed out of the State’s largest economic and cultural engine. What is your specific short and long-term plan to rectify this region’s abysmal Black land ownership rates?
What is your plan to rapidly advance Black home ownership rates?
What is your plan to rapidly advance Black community land acquisition and restore historically Black cultural and societal spaces?
How much will you invest in the: (A) Keiro project - the first entirely Black community led and centered homelessness consortium with wraparound direct services; (B) Red (Black and Green) Barn Ranch - Black liberated farming and youth healing center; (C) Youth Achievement Center - a holistic co-housing complex that is designed to support homeless students, historically underserved students, system-involved youth?
What mechanisms will you put in place to halt gentrification across the state, specifically to stop corporate and private developers from buying up once affordable property and pricing out Black communities and families?
Answer
District 7 represents South King County and supporting projects like the Red Barn Ranch are key. Looking at County Owned spaces to allow for land transfer to create holistic farming options for black people to commune with the land and grow food for family sustainability. As a Council Member I would work with the legislative body to rezone, transfer and create ownership opportunities for community based and run projects. Creating public private partnerships with credit unions and banks to encourage, support and finance home ownership directed at black people. Working with black led community providers to create housing cooperatives.
Question
The public education system is anti-Black. It uses harsh discipline policies that push Black students out of schools at disproportionate rates; denies Black students the right to learn about their culture and whitewashes the curriculum to exclude Black peoples' history, contributions, and accomplishments. It pushes Black teachers out of schools in Seattle-King County, and across the country, and spends entirely more money on imprisoning Black youth than on educating and healing them. How will you support pro-Black education?
How will you create and maintain Black community schools?
How will you establish and maintain restorative justice practices in schools to end the school-to-prison pipeline?
What will you do to ensure Black teachers are hired, that current educators receive anti-racist professional development, that schools implement Black studies curricula?
What will you do to ensure the Black community has control of schools that serve Black kids as well as education resources and levy funds that are meant for but rarely make it to Black youth?
Answer
As the daughter of history teacher I know 1st hand that understanding the past is critically important. As a council member there is little to no direct impact that I would have on the public school system. Therefore I would work with our state legislatures, school boards and superintendents to focus on a curricula that offered an accurate portrayal of historical information. I would leverage my connections to HBCU’s to advertise and recruit teachers, counsels and principals. I would work within our college system to increase access to accreditation and teacher training designed to increase the number of black men in the classroom and principal office. Leverage relationship with state leadership to have certification requirements to include annual anti bias, anti racism and inclusion training for teachers, principals and support staff.
Question
Already experiencing COVID-19’s economic fallout, conditions for Seattle’s Black community have worsened. Against that backdrop, KCEN and many others in the Black community mobilized to divest from policing and demanded correlating investment in pro-Black public safety solutions that work for us, for the first time in Seattle's history. This movement was driven by Black community and specifically called and continues to call for a reckoning with anti-Black racism (i.e., not a general “racial” reckoning, or a “BIPOC” movement).
Emboldened by the overwhelming support of thousands and thousands of community members, the Seattle City Council briefly upheld their pledge to divest from a percentage of the Seattle Police Department (SPD)'s bloated annual budget and invest modestly in Black communities. It should not have taken such prolonged, sustained community efforts for this change but we acknowledge the small percentage of divestment as a break from decades of votes to expand violent, anti-Black policing.
The work of reshaping this region into one that values all Black lives—and moves away from funding racist policing and towards resourcing true public safety—is overdue and not for non-Black folks, unaccountable gatekeepers or non-rooted folks to dictate. We advocated strongly for monies from the police budget to be invested directly into the Black community and are unmoved on that stance.
Last year’s accountability charter amendments demonstrate clearly the public’s demands that policing change at the County Level. What are your specific plans to divest from policing to invest in true public safety for Black communities for the first time in history? What are the tangible steps you will take?
What date will you close the Youth Jail in the first year of your term?
What specific steps will you take to shift investments from the criminal punishment system towards human services that are controlled, led and center Black community?
Answer
Safer communities will only emerge with investments in social services that include mental health and behavioral health services. Retraining officers to deal with people experiencing mental/behavioral health challenges. Requiring departments have a duty to intervene for other officers when they witness officer misconduct. Reevaluate how we respond to 911 calls. Not all calls require an armed officer to respond. Create options for officers to take individuals directly to mental health treatment instead of jail. As the county prepares to choose a sheriff look for an individual that will lead with cultural competency and anti racism, has positive experience and skill set with creating and antiracism environment within departments, has concrete specific examples of past successes in system change.
