Webinar: Engaging Through an Anti-Racist Lens, A Discussion with Sophie McGinley

Sophie: Thank you for your questions!  We do not currently have good outreach mechanisms in place with First Nations.  This month we will sign a contract and start working with a consultant to help us develop relationships between City of Eugene government leadership and Tribal government leadership with the intention of having clearer direction from Tribal governments on when and how they would like to be involved in City processes, this will include an approved way in which to do land acknowledgements.  We see this as a first step in a better direction and we will begin this work in the new year with City leadership engaging in a Decolonization training to help establish a foundation for the work to come. 

Caity: Bang the Table's Australian counterparts have a wealth of information on engaging with Indigenous communities. Here's a link to an op-ed on Navigating government engagement with Indigenous communities (hyperlink), which may provide some guidance for folks in the US looking to do this type of work.

Sophie: Absolutely—the virtual engagement depends on folks having access to computers and the internet and the Healthy Democracy panel used randomized address data, requiring folks to have an official address. We are always looking to do better and expand access and if you have ideas, suggestions, or lessons-learned, I’d love to hear them.

For the Boards and Commissions roundtable, staff invited representatives from all city boards and commissions. For the Local Partners Roundtable, staff invited representatives from local organizations or groups including: neighborhoods, builders and developers, conservationists, realtors, and advocates. Lastly, for the Equity Roundtable, staff invited representatives from groups or organizations serving underrepresented community members. All lists of organizations and groups are listed in the Public Involvement Plan and were approved by Planning Commission.

Sophie: The demographic data is found here: https://healthydemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/201112-2020-21-EugeneRP-Demographics.pdf .

To measure whether the engagement plan was successful, we plan on asking the folks we interacted with about what went well, what could be improved, and what their experience was.

Caity: This is one of the topics we are hoping to highlight in Part 2 of this webinar series!

Sophie: Thank you for sharing that example! You can watch the lottery process video (https://youtu.be/MWfT5mKgBAQ) that includes an explanation, and check out healthydemocracy.org/eugene for more information and documents.

Sophie: Yes! There is a setting within Bang The Table that requires participants to register using an email address to participate in surveys for this very reason.

Sophie: Compensation was already part of Healthy Democracy’s model so we knew that partnering with them meant that participants would be compensated. For the Equity Roundtable, we used a similar model to the City’s Climate Action Plan Equity Panel where organizations serving underrepresented community members would send representatives and would then receive compensation. All lists of organizations and groups are listed in the Public Involvement Plan and were approved by Planning Commission.