Ally Action Project Week 4: Policing, Business, and Good Trouble
The topic of policing started off our week as we focused on understand the overall issues and look for constructive ways to help. We learned that 28% of the 1000 Americans killed by police annually are black, despite being only 13% of the population. So far in 2020, there have already been 528 people killed by police. Campaign Zero, a movement to look at policing data and solve the root causes, shares 10 solutions to reduce killings by police. Campaign Zero lists each state and the gaps in laws that allow these gruesome statistics to continue. There have been 107 laws already enacted by 41 states to help curb police violence and killings. We recommend following the movement by signing up and donate if possible to Campaign Zero. You can learn which laws still require changing in your state, and contacting your local representatives to help fix policing.
https://www.joincampaignzero.org
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org
One of the more divisive ideas to fix policing is to defund the police. Often this is misconstrued as abolishing policing and embracing lawlessness, but the truth is that defunding the police means to reduce the scope and funding of the police departments and instead fund other services and departments higher. The city of Los Angeles gave police $1.87B (18%) of the city’s $10.5B 2020 budget, with the next highest funding going to the fire department at $732M (7%). There is a trend in the US where the 50 largest US cities gave police departments an average of 14% of total budget allocations in 2020. Former Dallas Police Chief David Brown gave an impassioned speech about how he felt that 'We're Asking Cops To Do Too Much In This Country'. He lists the non-policing work that his staff in Dallas are forced to do, and the idea is that taking police and extending them to do tasks outside of their scope hurts everyone. We agree with this conclusion, and decided to dive deeper.
http://cao.lacity.org/budget20-21/2020-21Proposed_Budget.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RtnQ2GqBeg
If we are to reduce the scope of police in the US, a portion of those funds should be used toward emergency mental health services. Situations with mentally ill citizens are one of largest portions of 911 calls, and minorities with untreated mental illness are 16x more likely to be killed by police. A recent example was about Nicolas Chavez, who suffered from mental illness, and how he was executed on his knees by Houston police on 4/19/20 though he had no weapon. The police union called it a “suicide by police”, meaning that he wanted police to come and kill him rather than to take his own life. Nicolas did not call the police, and if he was approached by a mental health professional instead of police who instantly saw him as a threat, he would likely be alive still. Our action was to email our representatives to demand defunding the police and to shift funding to emergency mental health services.
https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/storage/documents/overlooked-in-the-undercounted.pdf
We switched topics to inspect racism in business and how to address the root issue. Minorities are not well represented in the highest levels of executive leadership. There are only 5 black CEOs included in the 2020 Fortune 500, which is only 1% total. We found that overall, black men experience 4 times more prejudice in the workplace and have an "EPI" of 0.63. Other minority groups rated similarly low, impacting the growth and promotions of Hispanic men (1.07), Asian men (0.56), Hispanic women (0.49), black women (0.30), and Asian women (0.24). We decided that we should take a closer look at the boards of publicly traded companies where we own stock. We have an opportunity to petition these boards during shareholder meetings to implore them to build a more diverse board and executive team where needed.
https://fortune.com/2020/06/01/black-ceos-fortune-500-2020-african-american-business-leaders
https://hbr.org/2018/02/why-arent-black-employees-getting-more-white-collar-jobs
https://www.directorsandboards.com/roster-search
Robert Smith, the CEO of Vista Equity Partners, has been discussing a solution to the lack of minority owned businesses in the US. He has identified that 70% of black communities do not have a bank of any type, which limits access to capital and growth. The 4,700 banks in the US have $20.3T of assets to lend, but there are only 21 black-owned or led with $5B of assets in total (<1%). This gap in assets and access makes lending to minority owners more challenging. Robert Smith's plan is to move 2% of a company's net income to black owned banks, which would build the black owned bank’s ability to lend to small businesses. The additional assets would allow the smaller minority banks to grow branches in and service the redlined communities. Since the 2% solution is voluntary for the companies that will participate, we should be talking to our employers about having them taking action.
John Lewis, an American hero, died on Friday 7/17/20. He was a Congressman, a civil rights leader, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree. Mr. Lewis was one of the 13 original Freedom Rider in 1961, one of 6 that helped organize the March on Washington in 1963, and he even spoke ahead of the "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. that day. Mr. Lewis would say that you should: "Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble." To learn more about his impact on the US and the civil rights movement, watch the biography John Lewis: Good Trouble and apply his principles to your activism.
https://www.johnlewisgoodtrouble.com
We are saddened by the loss of John Lewis, and we hope the impact of his civil rights work will not continue to be undone. We have now completed 30 Days of Ally Action and we have been educated as well as emboldened to continue fighting for equality. Thank you for your time and energy as you are taking action along with us!