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This month, in the backdrop of President Biden signing his second historic executive order on racial equity, Race Forward visited the White House to record an episode of Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast.
This landmark episode of Momentum featured Chiraag Bains, who sat down with our team towards the end of his tenure as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for Racial Justice and Equity, to talk about truly groundbreaking racial justice work actively happening across the federal government.
In this in-depth interview, Chiraag talks about the Biden Administration’s deep commitment to racial equity –– and the significance of President Biden signing Executive Order 13985 on his first day in office, and how the work over the first two years set the stage for Executive Order 14091, which further strengthens the administration’s commitment through financial investment and working with community partnerships on racial equity work.
Throughout the conversation, Chiraag talks about the multigenerational commitment that racial justice work requires, touching on themes such as police reform, criminal justice reform, support for the LGBTQI+ community, and economic development, and the fortitude needed to do the work in the face of backlash to progress. Chiraag credits the team at the Domestic Policy Council for their commitment to the intra-agency work as well as the partnerships cultivated with community activists and organizations that together are moving the work forward, and how these joint efforts are the beginning of a massive systematic shift for the federal government.
An example of how community and government can work together to create equity in underserved communities is highlighted in the recently released report by Race Forward and Partners for Dignity & Rights, Co-Governing Towards Multiracial Democracy, which features powerful models of collaborative governance led by communities of color across the country.
This report focuses on the critical nexus between community organizing and local government, and documents the ways in which member-led organizations representing poor and working-class people of color –– those that have been excluded from full political and economic citizenship –– are working with local government staff and officials to build out co-governance models like people assemblies, restorative justice in schools, and worker centered enforcement of labor rights. The models that are lifted up are powerful because they give communities that are directly impacted a direct role in developing and implementing solutions –– participatory democracy in action.
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