By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
King County Equity Now (KCEN) is laying the groundwork for a participatory budgeting process for 2021 that will create “real solutions” to enhance the community with viable public health, equity now and public safety.
On Monday, the organization announced the launch of a Black-led community-based research team including over 100 community members. According to organizers, the efforts of the team are designed to include lowering barriers to community participation, centering and utilizing Black brilliance and creating jobs and support for communities hit hardest by the dual pandemics of racial injustice and COVID-19.
King County Equity Now is an ecosystem of Black educators, healers, generational organizers, families and youth, of over sixty accountable Black-led community-based organizations designing and implementing a new normal that is rooted in equity across all meaningful metrics — equity, justice, employment, mortality rates, wealth, land ownership.
“We need all hands-on deck here, and community voice must lead this process,” said KCEN Research Director and Inclusive Data Chief Consulting Officer Shaun Glaze. “And when we say community voice, we decidedly do not mean a task force that is cherry-picked by white wealthy people who already have access to political power.”
“It means immediate, direct input from lots and lots of people closest to the issues,” continued Glaze. “The Community understands the urgency. It’s our children’s, grandchildren’s, siblings’ parents’ grandparents’ and friend’s lives are on the line. This isn’t ‘theory’ or best guesses for us. Working together, we have the power to imagine and create a democratic participatory budget process where we the people decide how our money gets spent to improve our lives and communities.”
The KCEN-led research team currently comprises 14 organizations, including the hiring of 133 staff through those organizations to gather and analyze qualitative and quantitative data and conduct community outreach. The team is comprised of generational Seattleites from youth to elders, new immigrants and refugees, and diverse expertise from entrepreneurs, tech specialist, educators, community leaders, healthcare workers, social welfare professionals and artists, criminal reform and justice advocates, housing specialists, and retirees, people across the gender spectrum and several multiple multilingual teams.
According to KCEN, their research will help address the immediate needs of people in vulnerable situations by providing resources such as internet connectivity, PPE resources, computer hardware, sanitation, and print materials as well as direct cash assistance.
“Our team on the ground now represents the diversity of Black people in Seattle,” says LéTania Severe of Plumb Research Services and King County Equity Now.“We are excited to provide living wage jobs and a pathway to medical coverage for researchers and the people of the community who would be otherwise unable to receive medical coverage during a pandemic that disproportionately kills Black people.”
During this historic moment in defense of Black lives, KCEN’s community research project is working to cement Black people as subject matter experts and empowering them to develop and deliver resources that will help to improve the health, safety and the conditions necessary for people to thrive.
“We aim to find solutions to societal ills,” says Anthony Powers of Bridging Cultural Gaps. “Many of which are rooted in systemic issues around racist practices in the past. When we uproot those long-standing ills, it will bring healing and productivity amongst all communities in our society.”
