People of Color Legislative Conference
Areas of Focus Discussion for Spokane Region
Saturday, October 12th, 2019

The summit has three main goals: 1) to stimulate dialogue between diverse POC organizations, community leaders, and state legislators of color to build statewide solidarity, unity and mobilizing capacity on the most important issues to our collective communities of color; 2) to organize a platform for community leaders of color to develop a Legislative Agenda of top priorities for the Senate and House Members of Color Caucus (MOCC) to push forward; and 3) to come out with a working list of who’s working on what issue in what region, so that organizations across the state can build on momentum made at the summit. This is not meant to pre-empt any individual community’s legislative priorities, only build a resource for connecting people and organizations with shared issues.

Racial Justice Community Leaders

“Racial Justice Community Leaders” were invited to the summit and asked to bring their organization’s legislative priorities and were “welcome to invite POC community leaders you know to register for the event.”

Community Leaders of Color

The purpose of the summit was to hear from and connect people of color community leaders and legislators of color to build solidarity and mobilizing capacity across the state for issues that are of highest priority to our collective communities of color.

Below are Spokane’s top 10 priorities for each of the categories discussed.

Racial and Criminal Justice

• End cash bail
• Decriminalize driving with 3rd degree suspend license
• Decriminalize poverty
• I-1000 (pro) affirmative action (ref. 88 on ballot)
• Expedition of voting rights restoration of people with felonies
• HB 1517: Risk assessment, etc. for DV and IPV (need racial equity lens plus broader rep from impacted population)
• Rights and education for women who enter prison while pregnant
• True blood legislation

Housing, Homelessness, Displacement, & Human Services

• Statewide rent control
• Just cause eviction statewide
• Fair chance housing
• Enhance reentry housing
• More $ for permanent affordable housing
• Rental inspection
• Landlord registry
• Civil-legal aid/right to council for eviction court
• Build in rent grace period or remove 3 notice protection revocation
• Decriminalizing public camping
• Data privacy

Education

• Loan forgiveness
• Universal voluntary access to ECAP
• Full day kindergarten, Headstart
• Raise ECAP poverty threshold so more people qualify
• Cultural competence for Pre-K teachers
• Increase support for teachers plus families for accessing development resources
• Fund to provide disciplinary diversion to keep kids in classroom
• More teachers/authority figures of color
• Race pay equity-equal pay

Other

• Racial health equity (tied for first priority)
• Consideration of voting rights/participation in underrepresented communities (tied for first priority)
• Ask for expulsion of Matt Shea (tied for second priority)
• More $ resources towards impact of nuclear industry on communities of color (tied for second priority)

If you want to know what organizations and individuals registered for the event and represented people of color in our Spokane community, contact Terri Anderson and Jac Archer, the facilitators of the Spokane summit.

If you would like to see the entire list of issues suggested for consideration click here.