A MOTION declaring racism a public health crisis and endorsing the declarations of the King County executive, public health - Seattle & King County and the King County board of health.
That takes us to motion 2020 240, which would declare racism as a public health crisis. Sam Porter will brief this on the motion. I believe that we have guests from Public Health, Seattle, King County here, as well as Porter Gomez, yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sam Porter, Council Central Policy Staff documents for this item begin on page 63 of your packet. Proposed motion 2020 0240 would declare racism a public health crisis and make three related commitments and a recognition that the elimination of institutional racism requires engaging and being responsive to those communities and residents impacted by racism. The three commitments of the King County Council included in the proposed motion include a commitment to implement a public health approach to address institutional and systemic racism across government. A commitment to use the Council's authority to enact anti-racist policies and practices. And eliminate practices and policies that are designed to oppress marginalized people. And a commitment to implement and advocate for policies and procedures to ensure residents impacted by racism, especially Black and indigenous communities, are not subject to violence at the hands of law enforcement. On June 10th, the King County executive and the director of Public Health, Seattle King County, made a declaration of racism as a public health crisis. This was followed by the passage of King County Board of Health on June 18th, which passed Resolution 20 zero eight declaring the same. Page 64 of your packet includes a list of other jurisdictions across the country that have recently passed similar declarations. There is a title amendment to one that appears on page 73 of your packet. This amendment changes the title and just clarifies the intent of the motion as a declaration by the Council and also an endorsement of the declarations by the Public Health Department. And in consecutive. That concludes my remarks. Mathias Valenzuela and Celia Jackson are present to offer remarks as well. Jackson Mr. Venezuela. Yes. Good afternoon. Welcome. What would you like to know? Are you prepared to make comments or were you available for questions? Either it works for me, whatever works for you, or I also want to make sure. Do we have my piece as well? Yeah, I'm here too. Great. Thank you. Great. We're happy to go in and give an overview. If you'd just like to ask questions, we're happy to answer as well. If you'd like to speak to the the value and what statement must be made when we call, when we declare and state that racism is a public health crisis and what we might be responding to. Yeah, absolutely. I think we're all aware that we are in an incredibly important moment and that. There is need for change in King County. We, like any other system, must recognize that we have historically been complicit in perpetuating racism. And so it is our job to begin to dismantle that and to do the arduous task. Of. Untangling all of these issues. And as mentioned prior, the executive commitment to action and accountability and to do some hard work of listening. Reflecting. Disrupting business as usual. And showing how we can stand, especially for our black and brown King County residents, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to thrive. And so this work has begun. And the values. Behind it are truly in the values and vision, are truly rooted. In. Creating a King County where all people have an opportunity to thrive. We know that historically that has not always been the case. And it's again, it's time to really lean in to that and the values that have begun to guide this work and are around being racially, just being inclusive and being diverse and people focused. We will have to share power and work with community and community to find issues using community driven solutions and that are co-created by the folks that are most impacted by racism, that lives within our system. And we have to work across sectors to establish shared, measurable accountability. That's what success looks like. Community leaders and organizations will be provided resources to co-create these solutions. We must begin to resource community just as we would any other consultants that are bringing their subject matter expertize to the table. And we will very much rely on that as this work moves forward. And we we've made this commitment because we know as we lay the foundation together, we'll have a holistic. Better, stronger. Community. And so part of how this work is begun is that we have been working with a team of folks that have been instructed to begin reviewing what it begins to look. Like to develop an anti-racist project. And I would. Like to thank counsel. We've been we've read through your priorities, and they've been incredibly helpful in guiding this work. And it's very clear that there is much alignment. And I think that that is a really. Important piece, is that we will be able to work moving forward. Some of the things that we're were. Hearing and seeing are important where we're working to. Use. Data and information that community has already given us. Many of these issues are things that community has been loud and clear about for years, and so we want to be mindful and how we are responding to that and really show that we're listening by coming with something that. Addresses. They come up with recommendations that address needs that community has already voice and then asking what's next and. Again, as we look at the budget, we need to kind of re-imagine and re-envision what an anti-racist system could look like. And these are I'm going to give just a couple of examples of what this could look like to get us there. And again, many of these will touch on priorities that you all have provided, which is amazing. And so we want to begin to transform the way that our county views public safety. We want to reinvest in black, indigenous people of color, communities that have been most. Harmed. By systems rooted in oppression. And we know that we must drive resources to where they're needed the most, as indicated by those in the community. And again, that goes back to the. Piece where we're really utilizing community voice to develop these solutions. Another important piece is as we move into recovery from the pandemic, we cannot allow for the same mistakes that happened in the 2019 recession that systematically stripped. Household wealth. Wealth from black and brown communities who have yet to recover from that recession. And as we enter a new one, and as we are looking at providing. Services, we want to make sure that that is something we're mindful of as well. And I would like to turn it over to my audience, who is going to talk a little bit more about some of the policy areas, ATSIC over there. Yeah, great. Thank you, Celia. And thank you, Mr. Chair and Councilmember, I think this is a strong partnership between the executive, public health, all our executive departments, and it's great to be building on the action that the Board of Health already took and now that council is taking. So thanks for this discussion on this action that you're taking today. We it's very clear for us in public health that we are dealing with two crises, right? We have COVID and racism. And one of these has been with us for a very long time. So this is an opportunity to really actually ask ourselves as an institution and also our partners is why did it take you know, and why have we responded to COVID, which such resources efforts and a bigger when we haven't addressed racism with the same energy and focus. And I think that this is what's really about why the historical moment of doing this now is so significant. I think talking about this from a public health perspective, it means that we need to be both broad and very specific. We're talking about both acute and chronic or acute issues such as violence, such as things that are part of also police violence, for example, those things that are more chronic. We know that there are things that are much more slower moving, that are also taking healthy years, lived out of the lives of our black and brown individuals . As we just look at, you know, 12 years, for example, in terms of disparities for many of our communities, that is, those premature deaths are tragic. And we need to be really focusing on those in the very long term. So there is that dual focus. And also thinking about as we think about this is public health. We also think about it's the systems, the structures. It's not something that we can say it's for, you know, due to individual behaviors that these things are happening there. Actually, there's some very deep root causes. I think really significantly. We are at a moment where we have done a lot of work in King County. We are 12 years into this work in terms of our we launched equity and social justice. We have an ordinance that council passed back in 2010 and we have probably the most ambitious and specific strategic plan in the nation that leads with racial equity. So I think really right now, by declaring racism as a public health crisis, it's really a time for action. It's not we are have been doing the education and the things that have set us up for this moment to really succeed and go further. There are things such as our determinants of equity, our strategic plan, all those things that really allow us to use a public health approach that's thinking about both the quantitative components and then the qualitative in terms of community voice, all those kinds of things. And we know and we're in the early stages of this, but we are going to be working with across sectors, government, community, business, philanthropy and others to develop this work. But I think really importantly, as Celia was talking about it, that really does begin with community and that's in addition to the work that we're uplifting from community in terms of how we in our own apartments and work that we're doing around the budget. We're also going to be asking our our executive departments to work on anti-racist action agenda really that is focusing on such things as the criminal legal system, economic development, not just jobs. And focus on small businesses, but. The burden of that, for example, that we saw after the last recession, thinking about infrastructure and built an environment around mobility, around digital equity, around climate justice, health, well-being, housing, human services, those areas, although that's also we're in the early phases of developing those that work and should be able to share those with time here with council as well. But most of all, I just wanted to thank the council for taking these actions. And we look forward to working with you as one King County. Thank you. Are there questions for Miss Jackson or Mr. Valenzuela? Member Council member LAMBERT Thank you. I was very troubled as we look at the demographics you're talking about. And I know that we sent out a mammogram and a couple of years ago with the board I was on, and the proportion of women of color who had said they'd never had a mammogram was very frightening. So I would because somebody called me as the chair of the committee that oversees health in what we are doing or the percentage of people that are either insured or uninsured in various demographic areas of this county, so that we can start putting together a program if we haven't already done that. So I look forward to that. It. Why do you want to speak, daughter? I can speak to it as well. You're muted. But Councilmember, thank you for your question. I think it's an important one because something that I think is easy to forget in a moment like this is that. The. And besides, I do have a lot of different areas of discrepancy. And health is a really important one. And that the exact thing that you mentioned are the pieces that we'll be looking at. And we would love your partnership and those moving forward. And those are the exact kind of things that we want to elevate and discuss. And something that was so great about the van is we learned that when we bring folks. In, we bring. Services to folks and meet them where they are. It's a lot. It's incredibly effective for some communities. So I'm glad that you raised that health and other issues outside of the legal system are incredibly. Important to this work. And so thank you for bringing that forward. And my fiance, if you have any other pieces and please feel free to add. Yeah, I mean, I think that some of the things that we need to really think about in terms of in terms of breast and cervical health, for example, there are things that have been underfunded and are supported in King County that we've had to do, use some federal grants sometimes to be able to piecemeal some programs together . But when we talk to community, that's those are the kinds of things and services that people want to see and that what we want to prioritize. So it's thinking about how can we actually create a budget as well that actually begins to and programs that align with our values. So I think fundamentally I remember this is what this work is about and the insurer and uninsured, we already knew even before the crisis of COVID started, we knew what the outcomes were going to be. Unfortunately, we knew the disproportionate impacts of communities of color in certain geographic areas. We knew that what was going to be happening and now it's just playing out because we know who is uninsured, who doesn't have access to health care or who has those barriers or who has to actually be essential work or being out and exposing themselves when compared to other populations. So these are very much protectable. They're not, you know, and they don't go away once COVID goes away. So I think this is an important commitment that we're all making to think about this in the long term. And to make it a ongoing part of the committee once we get the committee going again. So I'm planning for that. Thank you. Sin. See? No further questions. Council member of the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to ask the clerk to add my name as a co-sponsor, please. I will do. Thank you. I would entertain a motion. The approval. We give a duff House recommendation. Is an amendment. In 2020 to 40. And I really appreciate the opportunity to bring this motion forward. The legislation is a statement from our counsel to the people of King County declaring that racism is a public health crisis and declaring that our commitment to actively work to address the harm that racism does in our community. Locally, our county executive and Public Health Department and the Board of Health have all made this declaration, and I believe that it's important that we, the County Council, do as well. This motion recognizes the many ways that racism harms people, recognizes the role that institutions like government have in creating and maintaining racist systems, and calls on us to take a proactive role to undo these systems. I also want to be clear about this. Well, this motion declares racism as public health crisis. This effort is not confined to the work of the public health department. This work needs to touch every aspect of the work that King County does, whether it is, for instance, transit planning , land use or housing. It is not simply for think of as a public health issue, but it's recognizing that racism is a public health crisis. Public health is affected in almost every policy we do and work on. And we need to recognize this is systemic racism inherent in so many of our systems and actively work to undo that. It's a pleasure to be able to work with my colleagues in this work every day and to be able to so forcefully make this declaration and reaffirm and recommit to this body of work today. For the comments. To Chair. Bowles. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm pleased to support this and sponsored as well. And as was noted, the Board of Health also has also resolution and we have a little project going on and I think it will be shown on the Board of Health website. Mr. Chair, shortly with all of the members holding up a small poster with the same friends, that racism is a public health crisis. So I look forward to that. Thank you, Mr.. Further discussion. I believe there's a title amendment, tier one. It means Porter anything further than the title amendment itself? No, just the title amendment. But he. Wasn't there to entertain a motion to approve the title amendment to on. The chairman of approval of a title amendment to one. Councilmember ballot, which has moved adoption of the title amendment. All those in favor, please say I. Am. Opposed. Nay, the ayes have it. Title is adopted and any further discussion with I ask the court to take the role. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council Member Belushi I. Council Member Buddy Sheep. Outside Member Dombrowski. I. Council Member Dombrowski Book Signing. Council member Done. Council Member Done. Council Member Caldwell's I. Council member Caldwell spoke to council member Lambert. Council Member Lambert. Woodside. Council Member of the club. I know some member of the group outside. Council member born right there. I council member gone. Make their votes. Council members are flying high. Council members are Helane Voci. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. Votes. Mr. Chip and Zero noes council member John. Excused. Thank you. By your vote, would you pass recommendation to motion 2020? 240 will expedite that to full council next week. The next item on our agenda is proposed ordinance 2020 205, which would submit to the voters an amendment to the county charter to reestablish the county sheriff as an appointed position.