My Reflections
By Wokie C. Freeman-Gbogba, Assistant City Manager, City of Brooklyn Park
As a public servant and in my role, I must put personal feelings aside and consider how best to serve our Brooklyn Park community and our staff. This means that I must still grapple with racism daily because it permeates our society and is embedded in our structures and systems.
Brooklyn Park is a community of the future, with more than 80,000 residents of whom more than half are Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian residents and more than a quarter are foreign born.
We are proud of our cultural and racial diversity, yet we acknowledge some racial disparities in poverty rates, educational attainment, home ownership, and unemployment rates, among other areas.
This makes our efforts towards advancing racial equity critical to the success of every resident. With that comes an obligation to confront racism and remove whatever barriers exist within our practices, policies, and procedures.
This past year has been extremely challenging. Yet, out of the pain, we have found a renewed commitment to ensure that we are not merely talking about what so many of our residents, and staff, face every day. We are also taking action. I am taking action. As employees of a local government whose paychecks are funded by our taxpayers, we all hold a shared accountability to do so.
Though we still have a long way to go, I am optimistic that the steps we have taken so far are already making a difference. And we will continue moving closer to our community vision of “Brooklyn Park, a thriving community inspiring pride, where opportunities exist for all.”
ABOUT THE REFLECTIONS CAMPAIGN
After a year of reckoning with the ravages of racism in our schools, businesses, neighborhoods, and halls of justice, we see clearly that racism is deeply woven into every fiber of our society and that the consequences have touched each person in America. We see the depths of division and racism and the imperative to work in new ways to address very old problems.
The Center for Economic Inclusion invited leaders at all levels and from across sectors to share their reflections of the past year; several members of the Center’s staff have also participated. We wanted to learn how they have reckoned with racism over the past year; what is different in the places where they live, work, and play; what they think the the future holds; and what they think it will take to reimagine and build an economy that truly works for everyone.
We thank the leaders who answered our call to participate in this campaign. All week long, we will share their powerful reflections, in their own words.
> To engage with our entire Reckoning to Rise Together series, click here.