Local activists help Olympia City Council rethink how it creates social justice group

The Olympia City Council has a plan for how to create a new advisory board focused on social justice and human rights: set the stage and get out of the way.

Council members discussed in great detail Tuesday the process by which they intend to form the Social Justice and Equity Advisory Commission, a placeholder name that will be among many aspects of the group adjusted by the participatory process the council intends to undertake during the next nine months. It was previously referred to by the city council as a Human Rights Commission.

People most impacted by longstanding social and institutional injustices will be invited in the coming months to speak directly to the council about their experiences in Olympia and what they feel the mission and priorities of a social justice commission should be. The goal is to seat a commission made up of a diverse set of residents tasked with advising city leadership on how to best combat systemic injustices perpetuated by local government.

“Our job is to be facilitators, but it’s not our job to define the changes, the barriers and where we need to work to dismantle institutionalized racism,” Council member Lisa Parshley said. Parshley made the official referral to the General Government Committee last month, asking the committee to take up the issue in July.

“It’s our job to make room for those who can help us understand. Not for us to be the leaders, but to let those people lead. The reality is that sometimes the best thing you can do is get people who know the answers to help you, and this is a moment when the city council needs to say that we aren’t the experts who know what to do,” she said.

According to an outline created by new Olympia Equity and Inclusion Coordinator Olivia Salazar de Breaux and Strategic Planning and Performance Manager Stacey Ray, there are four phases the city council will undertake in forming the commission.

The first is a two-month period beginning in September of listening and learning from a wide array of community groups and individuals long marginalized and discriminated against by government policy.

The intention is for the city council to then host a second round of community conversations to narrow the focus of the commission based on facts gleaned during Phase I, followed by a period dedicated to analyzing data and anecdotal information from the first two phases. The findings will be used to help determine the makeup of the commission and the role it will serve within city government.

“This is core to everything we do,” Council member Jim Cooper said. “I feel like we have seven members of our council who are here because they want government reform, they want the systems to be less racist and more equitable, and that didn’t start this year. I’m certain the city is not going to let this go by the wayside.”

Who it is that performs that analysis and shepherds the conversation has been a sticking point between the council and leaders of community groups made up of people of color and other marginalized groups. Mercy Kariuki-McGee, a founding member of Black Leaders in Action & Solidarity in Thurston County and founder of Amplified Voices of Olympia, said she took offense at the way the city intended to start the process on Tuesday before she and others stepped in.

“For the process to work, it has to include the marginalized people in our community, especially Black people,” Kariuki-McGee said. “It’s not enough to say you understand Black people. You have to dig deep in your heart and mean everything you say.”

A participatory leadership model was the longest of the three options for forming a Social Justice and Equity Advisory Commission considered by city council members and city staff, but one that was adopted unanimously for its added inclusivity and the ability for the city to take action on pressing issues that arise along the way.

One such issue came to light earlier this week, when Kariuki-McGee and others reached out to the city to express their concerns about its plan to contract with The Athena Group, a local consulting firm, to help with meeting facilitation and data analysis. The agenda for Tuesday’s meeting included the allocation of $60,000 to support the participatory leadership approach, $47,905 of which would have been for a contract with The Athena Group.

Local organizers were not consulted on the hiring of an outside consulting firm, Kariuki-McGee said, despite having asked for a seat at the table. She and representatives from a coalition of activist groups spoke prior to the council meeting with City Manager Jay Burney, who informed them the city would not include the consulting contract as part of its vote.

“I have nothing against Athena as a group,” Kariuki-McGee said. “I believe they do good work elsewhere, but I don’t believe Athena has the ability to represent the views of the people on the ground. To bring someone who hasn’t been involved on the ground wasn’t fair to groups who have been organizing for a long time.

“They chose a white-led organization, when they’re trying to dismantle racism, to manage Black people.”

Parshley said Wednesday that while the lead person from The Athena Group is white, the facilitator would have been a person of color.

Council member Renata Rollins spoke in favor of taking an “equity pause” to further examine the issue. Salazar de Breaux later clarified the city would take a step back to ensure the community at large has proper representation at all levels of the process.

Kariuki-McGee said the activist coalition has requested that it play a role in further discussions, along with representatives from interfaith communities and local business owners. She questioned why the city would spend $60,000 on an outside group when she feels there are local leaders of marginalized communities who have the expertise to facilitate the conversation for themselves.

Building trust between the people most impacted by systemic racism and the city council will be difficult without those people having a say in how the conversation starts, Kariuki-McGee said. “If marginalized people are not at the front of the effort to create the board, the board will not be effective, and importantly, the city will lose trust.”

Rollins and other council members appeared open to the requests for more input and for the city to take a closer look at how it sets the playing field for the long process ahead.

“We have an opportunity to change from just gathering community engagement to having community ownership of the process,” Rollins said. “I think it’s a pause to rethink everything. Business as usual would be using the consulting firms we know, but we have so much wisdom in our community among the grassroots, I think it’s a chance to tap into that to learn what our people want us to do.”