In August 1619, between 20 and 30 enslaved Africans arrived in present-day Hampton, Virginia. The 400th Anniversary of the landing of the first enslaved Africans in English-occupied North America marked the beginning of slavery in the U.S and a history of anti-black laws, norms and practices that continue to shape U.S. culture and society.

The Center for Urban and Racial Equity recognizes that our work is inextricably linked to the legacy of slavery and racial oppression in the U.S. We see a direct connection between the quest for freedom that has defined the lived experiences of black people in the U.S. for the past four centuries and our vision for racially equitable workplaces, institutions and communities.

And Still We Rise Storytelling Event

Responding to a call from the 400 Years of Inequality Coalition for organizations to host place-based convenings to mark the historical and present-day significance of 1619, CURE hosted a storytelling event titled 400 Years: And Still We Rise. The event featured eight dynamic storytellers from across the Washington, DC area who told stories about enslaved people, the struggles of integration, gentrification and the everyday racism that has become part of daily reality of living while black in America. We were also joined by the Mercy Band who provided musical entertainment for the evening. It was a moving and powerful evening of connection and celebration that lifted up the collective stories of black struggle, perseverance, hope and vision for a just future.

We’re pleased to share highlights from the event and videos of the phenomenal performances by the talented storytellers who graced the audience with their stories and creative magic. We’re grateful to Baba-C, Nubia, Sesha, Eboni-Rose, Dwight, Monique, Kymone, Arthuretta for sharing their gifts with us. [Click on the photos below to view videos of event speakers and storytellers]

Dr. Judy Lubin

Statement of Occasion

Dr. Judy Lubin

Statement of Occasion

Honorable Baba-C, GMS

King John Silver

Honorable Baba-C, GMS

King John Silver

Dr. Nubia Kai

The Story of Elizabeth Keckley

Dr. Nubia Kai

The Story of Elizabeth Keckley

Dr. Sesha Joi Moon

Richmond: Rooted and Rising

Dr. Sesha Joi Moon

Richmond: Rooted and Rising

Arthuretta Holmes Martin

Integration's Unintended Legacy

Arthuretta Holmes Martin

Integration's Unintended Legacy

Kymone Freeman

Lion and the Map

Kymone Freeman

Lion and the Map

Eboni-Rose Thompson

No One is From DC

Eboni-Rose Thompson

No One is From DC

Monique Diop

The Pin Head Tribe

Monique Diop

The Pin Head Tribe

Dwight J. Lacy

Good Vibes Only (GVO)

Dwight J. Lacy

Good Vibes Only (GVO)

CURE invites nonprofit housing and community development organizations to apply for service grants to receive comprehensive racial equity organizational change (EOC) services. Organizations working in urban areas experiencing high levels of gentrification and displacement of black and brown communities are encouraged to apply. We are especially interested in receiving applications from local and regional housing organizations located in cities in the South, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast including Washington, DC, Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, Houston, Atlanta, Miami and New Orleans.

Please read the full announcement for application instructions and details about CURE’s racial equity organizational change process. An informational webinar to answer questions about this service grant and the application process will be held on Monday, July 8, 2019, 1:00-1:45 pm ET. Please register for this webinar at
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/db27c36b0be8382cd746f627e8486654.   

Applications are due Friday, July 26, 2019. We encourage you to apply if your organization meets the criteria and to share this opportunity with groups in your network that would benefit from subsidized racial equity assessment and planning services.

What’s on your equity reading list for the summer? During a recent meeting, CURE team members shared books that are on the top of their reading list for the summer. We decided to compile these books into a summer reading list.

Our list is inclusive of books that detail historical struggles and books that take a more forward looking approach to remedying intersectional injustices. As facilitators and trainers, we often facilitate difficult discussions and bring people together for equity-focused convenings and planning sessions, so we also have a few reading selections that are focused on strengthening these key skills.

We’re excited to share our list with you and invite you to add to our list using the comment section below. We’d love to hear what’s on your equity reading list this summer.

African American and Latinx History of the United States
By: Paul Ortiz

Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Through an intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights, scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms U.S. history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism.

Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race
By Reni Eddo Lodge

In Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, award-winning journalist Reni Eddo Lodge explores issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race. Inspired by her frustration with the way that discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by those who weren’t affected by it, the book offers a new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism.

Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance
By: Edgar Villaneauva

Award-winning philanthropy executive Edgar Villanueva draws from the traditions from the Native way to prescribe the medicine for restoring balance and healing our divides. In Decolonizing Wealth, Villaneueva offers a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance.

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland
By: Jonathan M. Metzel

In the era of Donald Trump, many lower- and middle-class white Americans are drawn to politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, physician Jonathan Metzl examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. And he shows these policies’ costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising dropout rates among white Americans.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
By: Robin DiAngelo

White Fragility is a New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue.

Emerging Strategy: Shaping Change, Shaping Worlds
By adrienne maree brown

In Emergent Strategy, social justice facilitator, healer, doula, and pleasure activist adrienne maree brown offers a radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help guide designed to shape the futures we want to live. Inspired by Octavia Butler’s explorations of human relationship to change, the book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen.

Pleasure Activism
By adrienne maree brown

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and social justice facilitator adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism.

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
By: Priya Parker

In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive–which they don’t have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. The Art of Gathering is a transformative exploration of the power, purpose, and benefits of gatherings in our lives: at work, at school, at home and beyond.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
By: Matthew Desmond
Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In Evicted, Harvard sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. As readers see families forced into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, Desmond illustrates the human cost of America’s vast inequality and people’s determination and intelligence in the face of hardship.

The Center for Urban and Racial Equity seeks a Program Manager, Equity Research and Training (contract/full-time potential) to coordinate and implement equity organizational assessments, trainings and research initiatives. We seek a detail-oriented professional with experience working on local and national initiatives with nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies and across issue areas including health, housing, criminal justice and community development. The ideal candidate has deep knowledge of research methods as well as equity, anti-racism and social change frameworks, the ability to facilitate trainings and conversations on these issues with diverse audiences, excellent writing, organizational and problem-solving skills, and the ability to travel for training and consulting engagements. This opportunity is open to candidates based in Washington, DC (preferred), Philadelphia or New York metropolitan areas.

Applications are due Friday, June 14, 2019. See full position description for more information and application instructions.

A few months after selecting Long Island City as one of two locations for its second headquarters, Amazon announced that it was pulling out of the deal estimated to bring thousands of new tech jobs to the Queens neighborhood. In its blog post explaining the decision, Amazon argued that “While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.”

But is this the full story? To what extent were relationships built with community members, and their desires, included in the proposal and negotiations to bring Amazon to Long Island City? And what does this “opportunity” to bring new development and jobs teach us about equity and the necessity of inclusive decision-making processes, especially in cities where gentrification is rapidly remaking urban areas into places where low-income residents and communities of color can no longer afford to live?

Let’s back up and start from the beginning. In September 2017, Amazon, America’s largest retailer announced its search for a location to host its second headquarters. City leaders around the country quickly began to pitch reasons why their city would be great for Amazon. In its request for proposals, Amazon detailed its wish list: the best real estate options in a metropolitan area with at least one million people, incentives offered by state and local governments to offset initial capital outlays and ongoing operational costs, a highly educated workforce and strong university system, and direct access to mass transit and proximity to major highways and international airports. The company’s preferences for location also included “cultural fit,” which it described as a stable and business-friendly environment and local elected officials eager to work with the tech giant.

Over two hundred cities joined the bidding war with city and state leaders across the country going through often embarrassing lengths to win the company’s favor. Tucson’s regional economic development group, for example, sent Amazon a 21-foot cactus that the company rejected and donated to an area museum. The mayor of Kansas City purchased 1,000 items on Amazon.com and wrote Kansas City-themed reviews for each one, and the city of Stonecrest proposed de-annexing 345 acres of its land and renaming it Amazon, Georgia. New York Governor Anthony Cuomo, determined to top other competitors, offered to change his name to Amazon Cuomo.  

Critics of the bidding process speculated that Amazon knew where they wanted their headquarters to be before the proposal application was released to the public, but used the competition for HQ2 as a way to extract large tax incentives that it might otherwise have not received.

In early 2018, Amazon narrowed down the list of cities from more than 200 competing cities to 20. Amazon announced in November 2018 that instead of one location, it would locate their second quarters in Crystal City, VA, a suburb of Washington, DC and Long Island City located in the New York City Borough of Queens.  

After the selections were made, resistance to Amazon moving to New York grew stronger. Protesters went to the streets to oppose the move. More diverse and nuanced perspectives on HQ2 began to emerge including concerns about Amazon’s role in contributing to higher housing prices and homelessness in Seattle. Some of the more vocal organizations against the deal were local community groups such as an immigrant rights group Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, VOCAL New York, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Real Estate, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The groups expressed opposition to the $3 billion in tax incentives that were promised to Amazon and the likely displacement of low-income residents in an already heavily gentrified community. With the potential for an even higher cost of living, intensifying gentrification, increased traffic on the 7 train which goes in and out of Long Island City, the downsides of Amazon moving into Long Island City became clearer as advocates noted that rather than giving incentives to a company owned by the richest man in the world, the city and state should be investing in subways, buses, public housing and other infrastructure improvements. Had it decided to move forward with HQ2 in Long Island City, Amazon’s offices and helipad for shuttling company executives in and out of the area, would have been located next to the nation’s largest housing project where more than half of the residents rely on food stamps.

Amazon’s inequitable practices were highlighted as local unions expressed concern with Amazon’s labor practices including long work hours, low pay, and anti-union stance. Advocates also called attention to Amazon’s pitch to have its facial recognition system used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There was also the issue of Amazon created a helipad next to public housing where more than half of the residents rely on food stamps.

Fierce opposition to Amazon also came from the NYC Council. The Amazon deal was largely made behind closed doors, with no public input, and cloaked in secrecy as part of  Amazon’s non-disclosure requirements. With Governor Coumo and Mayor Bill De Blasio leading the charge, the HQ2 deal was made without going through the city council’s land use review process. Although council members had no option for reviewing or blocking the project, they held a series of contentious hearings with Amazon executives that challenged the tax subsidies, job creation estimates, and the company’s potential impact on the city’s infrastructure.

With Amazon walking away from Long Island City in the wake of successful community organizing and opposition to HQ2, policymakers and city planners should not lose the important lessons about equitable policymaking and decision-making processes. Power throughout the process was held mostly by Amazon, and the governor and mayor, who like other leaders from other locales that made it to the final round, were seemingly willing to do almost anything to bring the online retailer to their state. Activists, community organizations and council members opposed to the deal, shifted power by mounting an effective coalition of community advocates and progressive elected officials.

The HQ2 competition was all about Amazon. And that wasn’t fair or equitable. Communities are waking up and rising up against inequitable development processes that strip them of their power and voice in shaping the change they want to see in their neighborhoods.

Opposition against HQ2 is part of a growing realization that promises of economic development and benefits to low-income communities of color often fail to materialize. State and local governments have spent billions of dollars in tax incentives to attract corporations but these deals often fail to deliver promised jobs and business opportunities to communities of color and low-income residents. An equitable approach holds governments and corporations accountable for making sure the community benefits in meaningful and substantial ways, has a seat at the table in the decision-making process, and vested interest in the changes taking place. An equitable development approach to HQ2 would have ensured that community members most impacted by the changes that Amazon would spur in their neighborhoods, had a voice in the process at the beginning and were partners to government in shaping the process and the terms of the deal.

Amazon stacked the deck in its favor by setting up a competition in which policymakers, business and other leaders then responded to, often in secretive and non-transparent ways, to extract the best incentive packages from cities and states desperate to be selected as the site of the company’s second headquarters. In a tweet to Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYC comptroller Stringer stated, “With all due respect, you made this deal in secret with no community input from LIC residents. While Amazon is no angel, they played by your rules. The early takeaway from this: don’t be afraid of transparency and community inclusion.”

The HQ2 competition was all about Amazon. And that wasn’t fair or equitable. Communities are waking up and rising up against inequitable development processes that strip them of their power and voice in shaping the change they want to see in their neighborhoods. Long Island City is an important wake-up call to policymakers that equity must be at the center of economic development and neighborhood change.

Dr. Judy Lubin is founder and president of the Center for Urban and Racial Equity.

Demonstrations tied to the Black Lives Matter movement continued through the weekend in cities all over the country. As they marched in — and sometimes blocked — streets, protesters used smartphones to organize, communicate, and document what was happening, as it was happening.

Sociologist Judy Lubin said smartphones make the protest movement more accessible.

“What the smartphone is doing is that it’s almost offering an invitation to people that might not necessarily see themselves as protesters or who maybe in the past have been reluctant to join a protest movement,” she said. Read more at NPR’s Marketplace [July 2016]