Sunni Hutton
Sunni is a community organizer with deep experience in helping translate between technical experts and community residents with a focus on elevating community views and voices. She became involved in tenant organizing in 2018 when a bed bug outbreak occurred in her building. She organized with her neighbors to have a mass meeting and they decided that no one will have to go through this again so they adopted the Homes For All model, and started Homes For All St. Louis, a coalition dedicated to catalyzing tenant associations across the metropolitan area and improving housing quality. Her projects over the past few years range from organizing renters and institutional stakeholders in the St. Louis region into a coalition that builds tenants associations, leveraging an EPA Environmental Justice grant to build community and government capacity through a collaborative problem-solving model addressing environmental injustices. In recent years, Sunni has brought in over $1,000,000 in funding to Black-led community-based organizations in the St. Louis region. Sunni holds a Bachelor's of Science degree from Vanderbilt University in Policy and Human & Organizational Development, and a Masters of Education from University of Missouri Saint Louis. She is a former classroom teacher. When she is not working, her focus is family since she is the fifth of six kids born and raised in St. Louis. As a native, Sunni knows that the people are what make St. Louis a great place to live and it is the people who have the power to change St. Louis for the better.
Presentations from Facing Race 2024
The Power to Win and Build: Co-Governing Our Communities
Since Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock and a resurgent labor movement, our movements continue to expand and grow stronger, but we need to keep sharpening our tactics to build and win lasting power. Organizers are finding creative ways to build governing power that brings BIPOC communities on the frontlines of injustice into direct participation with administrative agencies to shape and implement just, effective public policies. Co-governance between communities and public agencies can help ensure the sustainability of campaign wins, deepen democracy and equity and create transformative policies and more effective governance. However, it can be challenging to build trust and alignment, collaborate across institutions, build capacity and sustain co-governance through ever-changing conditions within government and communities.
In this workshop, we'll share an overview of co-governance strategies between BIPOC communities (anchored by power-building organizations) and local and state government agencies. We will explore lessons learned and hear from Tenants Transforming Greater St. Louis about their organizing to enforce building code protections for tenants while building tenant power. We'll also break out into small groups to enable participants to workshop co-governance scenarios including situations from their own work they want to workshop with others.
Speakers: Sunni Hutton, Ben Matjan Palmquist, Kesi Foster