Thirty leaders from local organizations are joining together as members of the second year’s cohort for Wayne State University Law School’s Detroit Equity Action Lab to further the cause of racial equity.
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, and 2014 Wayne Law alumna Eliza Perez-Ollin, project coordinator.
The lab is funded by a three-year, $1.3 million grant awarded in 2014 by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
The lab’s purpose is to bring groups in different fields together to address the issues of structural racism in Detroit.
“Structural racism” describes how public and private institutions historically and systematically provide advantages to white people in ways that are embedded in society.
This year’s cohort members range in age from their 20s to their 60s. They include members of the African-American, Arab-American, Asian-American, Latino, Mexican-American and Native-American communities.
They represent a variety of organization sizes, geographic reach and perspectives with sectors including arts, civil rights, economic development, education, faith, health care, labor, media and policy.
Diversity in perspective is important to the success of each year’s cohort, Hammer said.
The second-year cohort will meet monthly for workshops, trainings and discussions led by local and national experts.
Cohort members also will initiate group projects to use their abilities to identify and address long-standing racial disparities in Detroit. The cohort first met for a retreat Sept. 25-26.
For new member Agustin Arbulu of Birmingham, who represents Medical Services of Detroit and is a member of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, the chance to serve with the cohort is a welcome opportunity.
“I am participating to interact with others to broaden awareness, expand my approach and better understand the issues and measurements of inequalities in our community,” he said. “I feel my ability to be of service will be enhanced with collaboration.”
For new member LaNesha DeBardelaben of Detroit, vice president of assessment and community engagement with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, issues of historical cultural inequity are well-known.
“At the center of the stories we tell and exhibit at the Wright Museum is oftentimes the struggle toward equity,” she said.
Hammer said he expected this year’s cohort to build on the first-year cohort’s work, and to focus particularly on the role of the media, messaging and storytelling in shaping racialized belief systems and social policy.
New cohort member Jenny Lee of Detroit is executive director of Allied Media Projects, an organization that cultivates media strategies for a “more just, creative and collaborative world” and serves a network of media makers, artists, educators and technologists working for social justice.
She also is a member of Detroit Digital Justice Coalition.
“I signed up for the cohort because I believe Detroit has the opportunity to set an example for a kind of revitalization that reckons with, and ultimately transforms, deep legacies of racialized inequality, that tackles deep-rooted problems creatively and holistically,” Lee said. “The equity lab seems to be the convening point for a lot of the people and projects that are advancing this more innovative approach to revitalization, and I’m excited to learn and grow with them over the coming year.”
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