Making Change, One Conversation at a Time

Montgomery County, Maryland, bordering Washington, D.C. to the north and west, is where I reside and work. The county is increasingly majority non-white and our racial disparities have been intensifying. The root causes of African American enslavement and centuries of socioeconomic oppression are finally being confronted head-on, with the 2018 Resolution to Develop an Equity Policy Framework in County Government of the County Council. The CC President and County Executive are implementing dramatic steps, requiring training of elected officials and county employees as well as engaging residents in “Community Conversations” to provide “feedback” that will inform upcoming legislation on racial equity and social justice. I attended one of the largest CC forums on June 26th. We formed groups of four to ten and used active listening and participatory communication to discuss why racial equity matters, whether and how we are affected by racial inequity, and what changes we want to see to promote racial equity and social justice. In our frank but civil interactions, noteworthy was that African Americans were present in fewer numbers than Latino and east/southwest Asian residents. An (unrelated) woman and man of African heritage in my group remarked that the forums are not being publicized sufficiently and that a lot of people just don’t trust government, including the police. We agreed that county officials should, as the saying goes, “meet people where they are.” Because the policymaking process is moving so quickly, it is short-shrifting community input. If our diverse communities are given the chance to engage, the eventual racial equity and social justice policy will be best served by a new agency to enforce and assess the new law. Our problems are 400 years old; we shouldn’t make change fast if we want it to last.

L-R: Montgomery County Council President Nancy Navarro, Middle Eastern American Advisory Group founding member Mumtaz Jahan, Yours truly (advisory group chair)