|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Palo Alto is seeking input from members of the Black and brown communities regarding their experiences in the city with race and equity, issues that have been under the limelight in recent months through Black Lives Matter protests.
Responses will be incorporated into a new initiative, Palo Alto Speaks, which seeks participation from Black and brown people who live, work, attend school or worship in the city.
The initiative is looking for comments, photographs, written statements, video and audio recordings about participants’ experiences, either past or present. The information will be incorporated into a Human Relations Commission report to the City Council.
The initiative will kickoff during the commission’s Thursday, Aug. 13, virtual meeting starting at 6 p.m.
People can share their experiences and images on social media through Sept. 7 with the tag #PaloAltoSpeaks in the post or by direct message; by email at RaceandEquity@cityofpaloalto.org; through the online forum cityofpaloalto.org/PaloAltoSpeaks (responses can be shared anonymously); or by participating in Thursday’s public forum. Instructions for accessing the meeting and for public participation can be found here.
More information about the city’s efforts to address racial inequities is available at cityofpaloalto.org/RaceAndEquity.
Not sure if I’m reading this right: we are seeking input from brown and Black people, but not from tan people regarding their thoughts about diversity, inclusion, community, history, heart, justice, mercy or Blacks Lives Matter?
If we did a better job including people of color on leader ship commissions and council for example putting Nia Taylor and Dina Philyaw on the arts commission, we might not even need HRC.
Been saying a version of this for 11 years arguably for 25 years in my day job, if leaders could sometimes think like an artist and not be boxed in or bureaucratic or formulaic a lot of our problems would fall by the wayside. I’m reminded of a song by the black singer songwriter Mark Stew Stewart who has taught at Stanford and been the star of a Broadway show about race, and made his Norcal debut at Cubberley in 1995:
Black men go to Aspen and rent colorful chalets
Giggle at the questions their mere presence seems to raise
Get taken for men they don’t resemble in the least
It’s a winter wonderland in the belly of the beast
And black men ski
Black men ski
Black men send back sushi with a scorned Yakuza’s flair
We make postmodern art with bacon grease and hot combed hair
We quietly play Beethoven inside our bass-mobiles
We can tell you how cool looks, but cannot show you how it feels
Sort of also reminds me of the time the 49ers were world champions and played an exhibition game in Japan and while being interviewed on Japanese national television Michael Carter let the newscaster pinch his buttocks
Better idea: honor Al young a black former Palo altan, former poet laureate of CA.