Advancing Equity and Health Amid the Greatest Crises of Our Time
Michael Bochynski represents Clean Water Fund on the APACC steering committee. Clean Water Fund serves as the fiscal agent of the Collaborative.
Recent events have elevated the overwhelming challenges that both the coronavirus pandemic and centuries of police brutality have imposed on people of color. Many businesses and communities have sought to avoid responsibilities to public health out of economic desperation while at the same time distancing themselves from violence with statements and pledges in support of Black Lives Matter. To adequately respond, we must first reckon with the Black experience inside our workplaces and communities.
Racism, like COVID-19 is a disease. And similar to coronaviruses, racist beliefs and practices are information packets of cultural transmission that replicate themselves by passing from mind to mind. And like asymptomatic transmission, community spread of such parasites of the mind might be innocuous and unintended, but are most often harmful and deliberate. Indeed, brainwashing and propaganda are superspreaders of the disease.
White people are accountable for being unpracticed and uncomfortable thinking and talking about, let alone leading initiatives around race and racism and parasites of the mind. As we reflect on our innate biases and positions of power within organizations that intentionally and unintentionally perpetuate racism, we must also fight this disease and not just talk about it. For there to be sustainable change, all leadership, and white leadership, in particular, needs to tolerate discomfort, push forward and take action. We may never entirely cure ourselves of racist prejudices, but we have to come to terms with the disease in order to control it. Racism “disease control” should lead to a reduction in racist incidence and prevalence of the disease as a result of public and private health measures.
As the Anacostia Park and Community Collaborative continues to look to deconstruct underlying systems and structures based on white supremacy, white leaders within our group must start by holding ourselves accountable and articulating how progress will be tracked and communicated to each other. To that end, several member organizations within APACC are discussing potential internal and external actions for inclusion in our governance structure, membership policy, public policy agenda and vision principles.
Meanwhile, we are continuing the development of a community-informed common policy agenda to inform decision-makers about our collective priorities for the Anacostia River Corridor. Led by the DC Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, the Policy Working Group is currently focusing its efforts on coordinating and submitting shared policy recommendations and comments to the DC council in response to the social, public health, economic and environmental disasters occurring in our neighborhoods and in communities everywhere on the planet.
Learn more about our shared policy agenda and vision principles here and share your thoughts in the comment box at the bottom of the page.