The Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI) is embedded in all City departments. Most departments have equity specialists such as Change Teams, Equity Leads, and CORE Teams leading anti-racist work in City policies and programs; however, their efforts have struggled with coordination and transparency.
These internal struggles reflect the experience of many community members own interactions with the City. In 2019, a community activist at a city-community engagement session in the Chinatown International District said, "There are 28 racial equity stakeholder engagement events happening in this neighborhood right now by the City. Are people at the City talking with each other? Are you working towards same outcomes? How can we trust the City if different teams come asking repetitive questions?"
Collecting and sharing our racial equity action plans is a step to address these types of internal and external issues reported by the City's RSJ leaders and through feedback from community members.
This is a phased project, with City and university researchers in continuous and collaborative development. City departments will report and update their racial equity action plans, and progress reports or impact assessments will be shared as they are developed.
Plans are collected annually and updated in quarter one of each year.