Dear Councilmembers, First, I would like to thank you for the continued dialogue on racial equity. My family and I have lived in Menlo Park for seven years now and have fully embraced our community. I also worked for the City for a few years and had the opportunity to work side by side with great staff. While I fully support adding institutionalized bias reform as a top priority, I would also encourage Councilmembers to take this conversation beyond training on bias. As a person of color and immigrant, I believe that we build better connections by understanding that both racial and economic inequities hurt all of us. The City has an opportunity to build a better community by connecting and speaking to both - through the support of programs that provide economic opportunities and through efforts that address and end the criminalization of the poor and people of color. Effective change happens when the goal is clear - working together to build a better Menlo Park. This means addressing both racial and economic inequities. Thank you, Azalea Mitch 177 Oak Ct “Government is one of the places where the community comes together and decides who it chooses to be as a people. Government is a key keeper of our values, and our policies and investments need to reflect that. Government has great opportunity to have an impact on the daily lives of all people and the power to shape policies that reduce our inequities.” - Mayor Betsy Hodges, Mayor of Minneapolis Received on Tue Jul 14 2020 - 14:42:22 PDT
