Twenty-six leaders from local organizations working in different ways for racial equality have been selected to be part of the first year’s cohort for Wayne State University Law School’s Detroit Equity Action Lab.
The equity lab is housed at Wayne Law’s Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights and is under the leadership of Professor Peter J. Hammer, director of the Keith Center. The lab is made possible by a three-year, $1.3 million grant awarded in July by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The lab’s purpose is to bring groups working in different areas together to address the issues of structural racism in Detroit.
Members of the first year’s cohort range in age from their 20s to their 60s and bring a wealth of ethnic diversity to the group, including African American, Arab American, Asian, Caribbean, East Indian American, European American, Latino, Mexican American and Native American.
“Diversity of expertise and perspectives within each cohort is critical to our success,” Hammer said last month, when the call went out for local leaders to join the group.
The participants will meet monthly for workshops led by local and national experts to build on their skills. The cohort members also will initiate group projects to use their abilities to identify and address long-standing racial disparities in Detroit. The group’s first session is set for Saturday, Nov. 1.
“It presents an opportunity for a collective approach of addressing racism in the region,” said cohort member Mark Fancher, staff attorney with the Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.
He is hopeful that the lab will create a coordinated approach to some of the problems that have plagued the Detroit area for decades, he said.
Cohort member the Rev. Michail T. Curro, executive director of the Interfaith Center for Racial Justice in Macomb County, agrees with Fancher.
“The vexing problem of racism is much bigger than one community or one county,” Curro said. “As a community organizer and as a pastor, I hope that progress can be made.”
He has personal reasons for joining the cohort, too. He hopes to re-energize his own work by his involvement and is pleased to be part of a group led by Hammer. The two men have worked together as members of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion.
“I really respect him and the work done there,” Curro said.
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