2024 Program: GARE Breakout Session Block 1
The Environmental Justice Academy (EJA) was developed as an integrated curriculum to teach data collection, analysis and evaluation methods; citizen science technologies and community-based participatory research (CBPR); and appreciative inquiry as a leadership strategy to address the myriadof social and environmental injustices experienced by marginalized, underrepresented communities. This evidence-based program has a strong emphasis on leadership development and supports increases in knowledge, skills, abilities for creating change. It is designed to strengthen community capacity for stakeholders working in communities struggling with environmental injustices. The presenters will discuus the EJA’s origin, progress, successes and opportunities for future partnerships and expansion.
Join 3 DEI leaders in local government across NC for roundtable talks related to: “The Pivot: Should we adjust our language and practices?”; “The Math Isn’t Mathing: Elected Officials and Seniors Leaders Say DEI is Important, but There’s Little Action”; “Strength in Numbers: Building Coalitions Inside Your Organization and Community.” Each of the presenters will guide a conversation regarding the aforementioned topics. Attendees can expect to connect with other practitioners around these topics and share their learning opportunities and what has been most beneficial to their success.
Upward mobility and collective prosperity cannot be achieved without racial equity. Structural inequities have excluded people from thriving in ways that improve their lives and opportunities for the next generations. A key starting point to addressing this is to strengthen the ability of local leaders to diagnose structural challenges and identify structural solutions. In this workshop, attendees will learn about the Upward Mobility Framework and the Equity Scoring Initiative as tools for facilitating measurable accountability to structurally oriented equity and mobility commitments. Presenters will demonstrate the connections between economic and social success and racial equity, share examples of how to operationalize these frameworks, and leave attendees with guidance for using them in their spheres of practice.
The CFE Fund’s CityStart initiative provides a structured approach for local governments to develop a strategic plan for financial empowerment programs based on community engagement; since 2021, CityStart has incorporated a racial wealth equity lens for building Black wealth. The City of Sacramento will discuss how CityStart provided a framework to further racial equity, fostered buy-in for difficult conversations, helped document barriers to wealth building, and led to blueprint recommendations that foster wealth accumulation and mitigate wealth extraction for Black residents. The session will also highlight other cities leveraging CityStart to further financial empowerment e orts that build Black wealth.
While many municipalities have a racial equity offce, an immigrant affairs office, or an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) coordinator, these o ces and approaches are often siloed. But what if our solutions were intersectional? What if our racial justice efforts explicitly included queer folks, those who prefer a language other than English, and Disabled people? Attendees of this session will learn about the principles of Disability Justice as a framework for collective liberation. Participants will examine their racial justice efforts and explore tangible strategies for movement building that transform our institutions.
This session will highlight the collaboration between the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) and area Chief Equity Officers to bring attention to systemic inequities in land use and housing systems in adopting Regional Equitable Development Principles. These principles adopted by the region are for jurisdictions to embed in their Comprehensive Plans, planning documents, policies and processes. The session is designed for participants to reflect on their own strategies to work with regional governments and peer jurisdictions to create an environment where everyone is working together to create a more just and equitable housing and land use system.
Staff members from the California Arts Council will share two important tools that have helped them to embed racial equity and justice into the state arts agency’s staff and Council member decision-making and policy processes. A hands-on workshop to follow will help guide participants to use and modify these tools to suit your organizational and transformational racial equity goals. To close, they will share a special documentary film screening of two short films produced by one of their grantees so audience members can see the real-time impact of arts and equity-focused funding, with a Q & A session to follow.
Our work to advance a just, multiracial democracy is on contested territory with campaigns that create distrust in government. So it is imperative to strategically leverage a meaningful narrative that moves your key stakeholders — whether internal or external — with a compelling vision for turning government into a force for equity and justice. Through misinformation campaigns and plans like Project 2025 and corporate takeovers of the media, the right has in effect stifled the public’s political imagination to dream of new possibilities for our communities and future. Status quo myths and narratives infiltrate our society, through the media and pop culture, and hold us back from dreaming big. How do we effectively challenge harmful narratives? How are we not just countering or reinforcing dominant narratives but elevating our own narratives for justice, equity, and democracy? What are strategic interventions we can make to interrupt the dominant narratives, and compel hearts and minds to resonate with our stories?
In this interactive, introductory session, you will learn some of the core concepts of narrative strategy and the elements to be able to craft your own narrative strategy. This session is participatory and you will practice identifying and crafting stories that lift up narratives that advance a just, multiracial democracy.