Caty raises an excellent conversation, and I am glad she has done so.
Let me share a little bit about my background on these issues, to explain what I know about these issues, and where I come from. Ten years ago, in Chicago, I actually worked on getting public participation, particularly in underrepresented communities, in capital budgeting processes in that city. There was a lack of basically any public participation in budgeting, and that was a constant challenge. There was no official system of neighborhood organizations, so as a citywide organization, I found it difficult to get in contact with some areas. There were several giant hearings across the city on the budget, and we had to push hard to even get those hearings to be held. Machine politics still rule in Chicago. There were very clear, ongoing inequities across neighborhoods in public investment, and these pretty clearly followed lines of race and class. But aside from brute politics, there was no way to change the way those decisions were made. And more often than not, poorer, minority communities ended up losing at this political game.
Coming back to the Twin Cities, my years there taught me two things. First, we are a long way ahead (though we certainly ought not rest on our laurels). In St. Paul, citizens, most appointed through a grassroots process, actually rank all capital improvement proposals against one another on carefully thought out indicators that get to community impact and need. The process does not become overly political until the Mayor and City Council step in at the end. And then average citizens have carefully developed a standard against which to measure their decisions - our CIB funding recommendations to the Mayor and Council.
But second, and more importantly, my time in Chicago taught me what a truly broken system looks like, so I know what to repair here. Two very interrelated challenges - public participation and representative participation - are absolutely key to a healthy community. And while people have heard me talk about the challenges in getting public participation, I'm glad that Caty brought up the other component - representative participation. We hear too seldom about the challenge of making our public processes truly representative.
As I've indicated before, district councils have a key role in the CIB budgeting process in St. Paul, so its important to look at how district councils are, or are not, representative of the communities they serve.
I have directed one District Council, and I am on the board of another. I absolutely agree with Caty that district councils are not entirely reflective of our community, which is a problem. That said, they're the best hope we've got for meaningful citizen participation, and deserve to be actively improved. The work of district councils should be scrutinized (as you have Caty), but not undermined. District councils absolutely need to prioritize work to reach out to the underrepresented communities, and to the best of my knowledge, most have prioritized this in particular in the last year.
Last year, district councils spent a long time on self-reflection on just these issues. District councils identified several communities that were historically underrepresented in councils, and agreed to track that participation as part of our annual grant submissions. I don't have those areas in front of me, but two areas that came up often were racial minorities and renters. In addition to some standardized indicators, each district council may also come up with unique indicators specific to its own community to track. Tracking income levels is far more difficult (and would offend some people), but tracking renter participation is a way of getting at much the same. The indicators would be tracked not only for board membership, but district councils would work to track the indicators for participation in special events, meetings, and forums. There is a long way to go.
In my opinion, most of the problem has not been any active discrimination by race or income per se, but first the lack of consciousness or acknowledgment of the problem first, and the challenges in addressing the problem second. By tracking the participation systematically, we are finally, systematically acknowledging the problem.
Next, we will have to do special outreach to underrepresented communities to overcome the problem. Some of this work has been going on for a long time, but the hope is that following our discussions, we will prioritize it even more. The challenge is overcoming the barriers to people of lower income and minorities participating in their community.
One barrier for low-income people is that often, lower income earners more often than the rest of us need to hold down multiple jobs to make ends meet, or they are going to school and holding a full-time job, and/or raising kids at the same time. Not much time left for community involvement, which may rule out deep involvement for many lower-income earners. Statistically, renters tend to move more often, which means the average renter may have less time to develop connections with any one community; this makes their participation no less valuable, in fact some times they may bring desparately needed new ideas. But it may mean that these individuals tend not get as deeply involved in their own community as others who stay in the community longer. All this is to say that if we are going to have a representative council, lots of outreach needs to be done to ensure participation among underrepresented communities.
Another barrier, both to the participation of racial and ethnic minorities and people of lower income is an uneasiness about whether their participation will be valued. So district councils might consider doing some appropriate sensitivity training for their board members, so there will be an understanding of how the organization might be more responsive to and understanding of these communities. Similarly, there is an understandable apprehensiveness about joining these groups on the part of the underrepresented communities, because of the perception that their participation is not valued as much. All this requires extra effort, sometimes a lot of extra effort, in forging meaningful social connections that help bridge these gaps.
Understand that part of the challenge for district councils is one of money. As we can see, it takes extra effort and to some extent money to do this outreach, and district councils are one of the last places in the City you could find extra money. But in a major step forward, district councils together came up with a new plan for funding, that held the funding of all districts at about the same level, or increased it for several others. The district councils which gained the most tended to be districts on the north and east sides, which had (even on a per capita basis) been historically underfunded. The formula also now also gives extra funds to communities on the basis of both poverty levels and language barriers in the community (it is illegal to use race itself as a funding criteria). List participant Chuck Repke could tell you all about that reform.
So we each have a part in ensuring that our own organization, particularly public participation organization, is reflective of and accountable to the full community. We need to acknowledge that this inequity exists, and document it. And then we need to do what we can to bridge these gaps on an ongoing basis, one event, one person at a time. A healthy city not only allows for a strong degree of public participation, but also make sure that the citizens that are participating are reflective of the communities in which they live.
Bob Spaulding Downtown St. Paul
On Mar 6, 2005, at 10:30 AM, caty wrote:
Tim wrote, "I'd like to suggest we be careful about where this topic is going." In my opinion the two realities: white privilege and imbalanced (racially and class) civic participation are inextricably entwined. In addition, discussing either or the combination of the both violates none of the forum's rules, unless new rules get created so as to assidiously avoid issues of white privilege, racism or the potential affects of those realities on how we do our democracy, online or otherwise. When I questioned the fairness and openness of the CIB process I certainly meant more than the fact that they were handpicked by the Mayor. My analysis, worked through over fifteen years of active community organizing in St. Paul, includes the issues of race and class (notice my post included tenants as those outside the present "open" processes not just African Americans. Tim you chose to center your critique soley on the issue of race). So my suggestions are: a) the moderator be very careful about how and why he or she tries to control or limit any discussion and that we can and should be able to talk about both issues (or multiple issues) if they are in any way related and relevant to a given topic and its relation to how we do our democracy. I find it fascinating that the first time since I've been reading/particpating in this dialogue, when race is mentioned, there is an attempt to squash/limit/control the discussion. Finally, we should probably allow Bob to define what he meant by privilege don't you agree.
Tim Erickson wrote:
that if the CIB committee members are being chosen by the Mayor from a pool of folks that come mainly from the district council system, then it is flawed, inequitable and so unfair system and will choose to spend tax dollars on projects that they and their peers perceive as important. And as far as accepting or admitting your own privilege thats between you and your conscience.
Caty (and all):
I'd like to suggest that we be careful about where this topic is going. The original accusation was that the CIB process is "hand picked" by the mayor. Now, the criticism is that the CIB process is greatly influenced by the effects of "white privilage".
These are entirely different points and need to be separated. I don't think that anyone in this forum has said that the CIB process is the best possible system for citizen input or even claimed that minority groups are adequately represented.
The only claims that I have heard are:
#1) That the body is not "hand picked" by the mayor. In fact, it appears that neighborhoods have a great deal of influence on who is on it. #2) That the body is more inclusive than just about any other political body in the city.
Its completely possible for both of these statements to be true AND to still claim that the process if far from "open and inclusive."
Just to summarize. For the sake of clarity, I would suggest that if we proceed with this topic we be clear about which issue we are talking about.
Are we concerned about the Mayor "hand picking" the CIB committee?
OR
Are we talking about racism and the effects of "white privilege" on citizen participation?
If we are to have a productive discussion, its essential that we all be talking about the same thing! I suspect that when Bob said he was "not privileged," he was speaking in terms of "having an 'in' with the mayor," which is far different from saying that he does not have "privilege" in comparison with some of the very poor and disadvantaged communities in our city.
In short, I'm not sure I see disagreement on this issue as much as I see different people talking about completely different things. That's not to say that real disagreement will not emerge as we proceed.
Thanks,
Tim Erickson Hamline Midway
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