Building resilience through DEIB pandemic response efforts

Examples from seven local jurisdictions.

By: Benita Rodriguez Horn, AWC DEIB Consultant

When the Cityvision editorial board decided this issue would cover city resilience, I began to wonder what impact, if any, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) work has had on resilience in Washington communities. So, I contacted DEIB practitioners in Spokane, Kirkland, Auburn, Shoreline, and Vancouver, as well as the Washington State Patrol, and the Port of Seattle to listen to their thoughts and experiences.

Cities have myriad experiences with DEIB, of course, but a strong commonality began to emerge through these conversations: The work to achieve DEIB became more vital as cities responded to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has, in turn, furthered the resilience of our communities.

Washington State Patrol

As one example, the Washington State Patrol developed trainings to help examine how resilience erodes when people don’t feel a sense of belonging. The agency’s philosophy is that inclusion is a set of practices, while belonging is how people feel about those practices internally.

Resilience is further evidenced by the agency changing its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to the Office of Culture and Engagement. They are amplifying resilience through exploring what works to truly engage employees in their work, to value their current and background knowledge, to honor their lived experiences, and to understand how engagement impacts not only employee resilience but also retention. In addition to this internal work, the agency is working with a community engagement team to establish staff in its eight state districts.

Spokane

In response to the pandemic, The NATIVE Project in Spokane began intentionally expanding outreach to all marginalized communities with support for COVID-19 testing, vaccination drives, and public health education. They were able to use their access to both federal grants and federal vaccines to serve the entire community.

The pandemic also spurred the growth and expansion of grassroots community groups in Spokane, many of which focused on inclusion and belonging. These groups include Nuestras Raices and Asians for Collective Liberation, which joined in coalition with other cultural organizations working together to promote (among other things) equitable access to culturally competent and linguistically accessible health and human services.

By increasing inclusion, the city grew stronger and wiser. They exercised that strength by creating an equity vision statement for the distribution of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds and working with cultural groups to ensure equity and inclusion drove the application and distribution of these funds.

Kirkland

In the western side of the state, Kirkland has seen resilience in the form of residents’ supporting one another. One example was the great turnout at the ribbon-cutting for the city’s first Pride crosswalk. Showing community support is one way to negate negative social media comments while sending a message of inclusion, resilience, and pride in the community.

Auburn

Auburn officials thinks about resilience often, as the city is located on the ancestral land of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, with whom they work to build and maintain healthy economic, environmental, and safe communities.

For example, there is intentionality behind training all personnel about the city’s past. A central part of the training is a visit to the White River Valley Museum to learn the racial history of the region. Staff members learn about the treaties with the Muckleshoot people and how their land was taken and given to settlers and the railroad.

City workers also learn about the internment of Japanese American community members and the hateful and discriminatory practices they experienced after World War II, how they experienced segregation and discrimination, and how essential they are to the region’s agriculture.

Understanding this history and how it laid the groundwork for present inequities enables staff to build resilience in their DEIB work and to understand the importance of using the lens of racial equity in a hyperlocal way.

Shoreline

In Shoreline, the goal of the Office of Emergency Management is to build community resilience in the face of disaster. During the pandemic, the city used emergency capital to create a community fund with low barriers and quick turnaround, particularly for low-income and communities of color, which were most negatively impacted. And unlike other human services funding, payments were made in advance rather than through the reimbursement model.

That city’s growth of perspective and resilience is visible in the increasing level of comfort doing things “outside of the box” and outside of a hierarchical approach. One example is the way in which philanthropy and government are beginning to shift priorities based on what was learned during the pandemic. The pandemic magnified the need for the community to come together and show their collective strength through an increased focus on inclusion and belonging.

Vancouver

Further south, Vancouver connects resilience and DEIB by taking a trauma-informed approach that includes self-care, seen as one of the keys to resilience. This method involves exploring what they can do as a government entity to reduce hate in the community. Examples include adding no-cost annual physicals in their health insurance coverage, working to prioritize historically underserved and underfunded communities in the city, investing in ways that do not result in displacement, and amplifying businesses in marginalized communities.

Port of Seattle

The Port of Seattle aims to enhance resilience at the port and in the community by using an equity lens. In key decisions, they consistently work to identify who would be most burdened and who would receive the most benefit.

When the pandemic struck and most travel ceased, the 28,000 people who work at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport experienced grave impacts. The port funded an effort to sign employees up for state-subsidized insurance and health benefits. The pandemic created the opportunity to ask: “Who do you serve first and how do you do right by those most historically disenfranchised?”

Another case of building resilience at the port came this year thanks to their best cruise season ever. Some of the profit was used to create a youth intern program in the maritime sector. Youth of color and women are receiving training and participating in apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs.

DEIB and resilience

One of my colleagues reflected on whether DEIB work improves resilience or whether Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, low-income communities, LGBTQIA+ communities, communities of people with disabilities, immigrant communities, and others who have been historically marginalized are resilient despite the impact of their local governments…

Perhaps an inquiry for a future article?