Facing Race: A National Conference in St. Louis, MO — November 20-22, 2024

Community Benefits Agreements

ST.LOUIS COMMUNITY BENEFITS AGREEMENTS

 

Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) are legally binding contracts that ensure that local communities benefit from private developments that receive taxpayer money. Those benefits include, but are not limited, to, wage requirements, local hiring goals, affordable housing stipulations, and more.

In 2018, Facing Race adopted this tool, and is using it to support local communities nationally as one of the mechanisms to shape the decisions and the conditions that directly and indirectly affect their lives. We would like to introduce that motto along with our cultural dynamic to create similar agreements for the 2024 Facing Race host city, Saint Louis, MO.

STL is home to some of the most culturally diverse and creative geniuses yet it has also become the blueprint for radical social justice and the catalyst of change. Being one of the most divided cities in America, with a whopping 81 municipalities in St. Louis County alone; the city has 91 special districts and 23 school districts, creating a melting pot far from unified. The systemic structure of our communities in areas of education and economic development has created an environment with oppressive policies and few resources in between for people of color, LGBTQ+ members, Indigenous populations, and the reproductive justice community. 

Over the last decade since Michael Brown Jr was senselessly murdered by a police officer in 2014; St. Louis and the surrounding communities have continued to press for and work towards equitable change in areas of policy, youth engagement and trauma support. It is no secret that STL has historically been the number one crime city in America many times. With all the trauma we experience it's important to have adequate space created for healing and evolving in honor of where we have come from in the past 10 years. 

And so it becomes important that the Facing Race Conference be not only a safe space for these communities but also provide a space for people from those backgrounds and lived experiences to show up and share their firsthand experiences and resources.

Facing Race will work with local organizers to ensure the Facing Race 2024 conference adheres to the principles of Community Benefits Agreements. These principles will reflect our joint commitment to advance equity by lifting the local leadership of Saint Louis communities—particularly communities of color and other historically underserved communities—and by utilizing locally-owned businesses, and movement communities in STL at large.

OUR PRINCIPLES:

We recognize that communities in STL are bringing the following to the table:

  • Cultural capital and credibility 
  • Equitable relationships with grassroots organizations within the footprint of the metropolitan region and beyond.
  • Insight, historical analysis, and lived experience from diverse communities within STL.
  • Political and cultural context in a diverse artivists, organizers, healers, educators, content creators, entrepreneurs, and other areas.
  • Art and cultural practices rooted in our multiple and complex identities as LGBTQ+, Immigrant, LatinX, Black, and Indigenous people of color.
  • Unique perspectives of the political and social landscape of STL and Mound City by communities most affected by it.
  • Spaces of joy, learning, and healing.

We see Facing Race 2024 STL as an opportunity to:

  • Uplift authentic narratives about STL Racial and Cultural History and a reimagining of the future
  • Connect local experts including organizers, educators, creatives, policymakers and decision-makers, cultural change makers and other leaders in a powerfully authentic way that promotes and builds systemic solutions for the racial justice challenges in our time.
  • Educate policymakers and decision-makers on how to make social justice and racial equity more central to their work.
  • Amplify local struggles, local solutions, and collective leadership to overcome racially disparate outcomes.
  • Find solutions to common threats to our liberation and well-being by sharing our expertise and knowledge.
  • Represent QTBIPOC power and leadership and create spaces of healing and solidarity with people closest to the harm.
  • Uplift our local movement on a National platform in a way that amplifies our work and brings in more money, resources and power for our communities.

OUR PLAN:

We will:

  • Acknowledge and uplift the history of the unceded territories of what is now known as Indigenous Sacred Land- Cahokia Mounds
  • Uplift the multitude of much-needed transformation taking place in STL, such as the advocacy for Reproductive Rights, Qualified Immunity, oversight of the City of Ferguson Consent Decree and ensuring there are accessible resources to foster a sense of care for our most vulnerable and targeted communities.
  • Within each session: facilitate a process for documentation with attribution to the authors for ideas generated and make this documentation available to all participants (as a way to value contribution, create transparency and prevent co-optation of ideas).
  • Support ongoing conversations between the private foundations that support Facing Race and STL’s Metropolitan grassroots organizations, artists, and residents.
  • Take leadership from the expertise and relationships of STL’s  organizing community, its members, volunteers and directly impacted persons.

Furthermore, we commit to advancing equity in our business partnerships by:

  • Placing priority consideration to businesses that are small, socially and economically disadvantaged, and/or owned by Black residents, people of color,  women, and people who are transgender or gender non-conforming.
  • Establishing a goal in STL to spend 75% of the total conference budget, as well as money spent by conference participants, towards locally sourced goods from suppliers whose ownership structures reflect the demographics and historically marginalized communities of the STL Metropolitan area. These goods and services include:
    • Small grants to local organizations
      Photography services
    • Graphic Design
    • Media production services
    • Writing and Editing
    • Local PR and communications
    • Catering/ Venues
    • Transportation/Tours
    • Presenter/Panelist participation
    • Printing, Marketing and Advertising

Lastly, we will lift up local activists, organizers, artists, educators, media makers, and beyond, by:

  • Resourcing STL’s healers for a healing space at the virtual conference.
  • Providing scholarships and discounted vending space opportunities for STL. 
  • Providing host committee members with registration scholarships.
  • Resourcing STL organizers to offer Youth programming.
  • Resourcing the creation of or uplifting of current online directory of BIPOC businesses that can offer products online. Possibly creating a theme box of BIPOC business items as giveaways. www.fortheculturestl.com
  • Making cultural space and programming by STL artists at the virtual conference central and equitably resourced, and supported.
  • Prioritizing conference content that uplifts and connects with local social justice movement building.