SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) -- The city of San Jose’s newly created Office of Racial Equity has appointed a new director.
Zulma Maciel has been selected as the city’s new Director for the Office of Racial Equity and will now be tasked with advancing citywide equity framework to address systemic racism.
“The timing couldn’t be better, this is now cracked open conversations that we weren’t having a few years ago, so we’re going to seize on that moment,”
“Naturally, we had this inclination to center equity in the work that we did in the Office of Immigrant Affairs … those conversations then led us to racial equity, which is broader but leading with race.”
For years city officials have been calling for the creation of an office of racial equity in an effort to address racial inequities in public policy, programs and spending.
Maciel tells KRON4 News one of the first things she plans to address is beginning to having conversations about race inequality throughout city departments.
“We need to ground the city workforce on the concepts of leading with race, institutional and systemic racism, racial equity, intersectionality, implicit bias,” said Maciel.
“Grounding in these concepts are necessary prior to applying racial equity lenses.”
Establishing the office of racial equity comes at a time as the city has had to deal with unprecedented events -- including San Jose’s Latinx communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and the nationwide protests after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Despite community outcry to “defund” the police -- city council kept the San Jose Police Department's $449 million budget but in an effort to address racial equity decided to create a new Office of Racial Equity.
“It really resonated for us in the budget process,” said Dave Sykes, San Jose City Manager.
“We are actually making budget reductions but given the importance of how racial equity plays in terms in the services that we provide,”
“The council felt like, no, we need to make this a priority, the administration felt like we need to make this a priority and I think our community felt like, yes, we needed to make this a priority.”
In the coming weeks Maciel says she will continue to have conversations with community leaders and organizations on how to best move forward.
“There’s a lot at stake and I recognized that coming into this role,” Maciel said.
“This week has been a lot of conversations with various groups and really trying to understand what the best path forward is … but I just think there are many more conversations that need to be had.”
The Office of Racial Equity will also partner with community based organizations to get input on local policies which include community safety as it pertains to local law enforcement policies.
The new office will be under the Office Of Immigrant Affairs which Maciel served as program director since 2015 where she led the city’s first initiative to welcome immigrant residents and help provide a more welcoming environment for immigrants and refugees.
Maciel says she is most excited to engage with the community and community-based organizations to best address racial inequities in the city.
“I am really looking forward to tapping into community networks to enable transformative change,” said Maciel.
“The community networks know, they have solutions, they are grounded in truth in terms of their lived experience on what’s happening at the community level,”
“While we can look at data, we can analyze data, it’s not until you have community insight that actually helps you shape solutions for better outcomes.”
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/3jKyjsQ
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