In December, the Food Co-op Board formed the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Steering Committee. DEI is essential board work to ensure that the Co-op fulfills our mission of serving our whole community.  The board wants to learn more about the history and implications of these issues and explore ways to improve our inclusivity and accessibility. The board had already been working on these issues, but after the national discussions about racism opened up, we felt that it was important to focus more intentionally in our study and training.

The committee will be organizing research, discussions, and work sessions on DEI for the board. For instance, we began by exploring the words we use when we refer to this work—such as diversity—in order to reach a shared understanding of what we mean by these words. And in January, the committee organized a work session for the board with Holly O’Neil of Crossroads Consulting in Bellingham. She facilitated a visioning process to help us focus our work by imagining what it would look like if the board, operations, and the Co-op fully lived our values of DEI and by discussing how we want to move forward in living these values. The board also intends to reach out to the community to share what we learn. In addition to this work, the board will research additional community partnerships for education and advocacy.

               The committee created a library in the Annex with books that relate to DEI for the board and senior staff members. In our March work session, the board will be focusing on two books. The first is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which he wrote as letters to his teenage son. The first letter focuses on what it was like for Coates growing up in America as an African-American male and the fear he felt. The second letter is Coates’s reaction to a friend getting shot and killed. This tragedy, Coates explains, gives a lasting edge to his anger. As a parent who raised two sons, I was struck by the inherent worry that Black parents have for their children, especially for their sons, that I did not have as I raised mine.

The second book we are studying is Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times. This book of letters by various authors was written after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, but its heartfelt messages are applicable today. The letters of hope and the change needed for equality are written to children, grandchildren, and elders. I also found the stories helped me understand how racism affects different people—their stories were heartbreaking and enlightening.

A local resource members can check out is the current issue of the magazine Strait Up. It features “Change” with racial justice as its focus.