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Dismantling systemic racism must happen in our lifetimes. Systemic racism is a virus that has plagued America from its very first days. While it took 400 years - or over 20,000 weeks - to get to this point, we believe that Oregon is capable of starting this important work. Our children do not have to inherit the social ills we’ve been born into.

In - quite literally - every single aspect of American society, Black lives are shown that they don’t matter:

• In education, there are significant disparities in attainment and access to schooling and/or the tools that help boost opportunities for success. Our children are overly disciplined, faced with rampant implicit biases. Our children lack the representation of adults/teachers/leadership that look like them. We are taught an incorrect version of history that erases our successes and our existence.

• In healthcare, quality of life, lifespan, the way we’re treated by doctors, in outcomes, the social determinants of health - we are at the bottom of the list. We run high on the list of folks with the highest rates of disease, severe illnesses and death. 

• In socioeconomic status and wealth, we are at the bottom of the list. Even with more education, we fare less well than our white counterparts. The racial wealth gap continues to widen. We are over-represented in poverty.

• In the workforce, rampant discrimination are barriers to our advancement. We are over-represented in low-wage jobs, entry level positions, unemployment and more. 

• In housing, we are over-represented as renters, over-represented in the houseless population, over-represented in the most vulnerable of the houseless population, underserved in services that help climb out of houselessness. We are two to three times less likely to own homes than our white counterparts. We are screened out of and denied housing. Gentrification shuffles us from area to area. We are targeted for unfair, predatory investments. 

• In policing and carceral systems, we are three-times over-represented in those on death row, over four to fives times over-represented in those in prison, three times more likely to be killed by the police, and umpteen times more likely to be stopped and harassed by police.

The list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on. These systemic injustices are the things that drive us into the streets day after day, night after night.

When the protests started it seemed as if lawmakers got stuck in a dangerous rut of “Acknowledgment and Apology.” They would schedule these press conferences acknowledging the pain and plight of Black people, apologize for their part in it, then go right back to business as usual with no substantive commitment to change. In the civil rights era, many leaders engaged in long-term discussions that centered long-term change, the advancement of equality and resulted in sweeping changes that many of us rely on for protection today. So it was baffling, then, that our elected leaders weren’t debriefing us on any meetings or discussions about what kind of long-term change could or would be enacted.

That’s when we took matters into our own hands.

A group of Black-led organizations, Black individual activists and protest organizers came together and asked the question - what demands do we want to make and of whom? The conclusion was simple:

“We don’t need to make any new demands. There are pages and pages already crafted, already proposed, and already being discussed. The problem is, these elected leaders haven’t enacted them.”

So we decided to compile the proposals generated in the Urban League’s “State of Black Oregon, ”the Portland African American Leadership Forum’s “People’s Plan,” Coalition of Communities of Color’s publications “Communities of Color in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile” and “Leading with Race: Research Justice in Washington County,” as well as new policy demands from nightly protest organizers and organizations like Unite Oregon and PAALF Action Fund’s “Defund. Reinvest. Protect” policy platform, and Washington County Ignite’s “Reimagine” effort. Over a period of a six weeks, we asked elected leaders from federal, state, regional, county, and city governments one simple question, “What timeline do you commit to finally get this stuff done and who, in your jurisdiction, will lead it to the finish line?”

We phrased the discussion in terms of “DIVEST” and “INVEST.” When a jurisdiction would make the decision to divest money, power, etc. where would the funding and energy go for investments in community capacity? Many asks resulted in gaps in the system where community capacity has been severely underfunded or held from community influence due to being nested within government infrastructure. This was critically important because as divestments occurred, if the funding had no place to go, it would go into a pool completely governed by the City and subject to political influences instead of community-based recommendations.

Elected officials and their staff met with this group for two hours almost every Friday since June 12th. They were tasked with assigning a PROGNOSIS (will happen, done, like to happen, unknown, etc.), a TIMELINE (30-90 days, in upcoming lawmaking sessions, etc.), and LEGISLATIVE LEADS (which elected’s office would take the lead in implementing this policy proposal) to each of the policy proposals. At the end, we asked them to outline a specific plan for how Black community members could engage in an iterative process to create and accomplish these goals.

This site is the result of that work.