After the death of George Floyd, the discussion that sprung up about systemic racism led many businesses and nonprofit organizations to reexamine their policies and practices. One by one, announcements were made denouncing the death of Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, and vowing to address various aspects of racism.
Here in Northeast, East Side Neighborhood Services released a statement on June 16, outlining measures the nonprofit social service agency plans to institute in the short and medium term, including figuring out security and de-escalation alternatives to calling the police, accepting the resignation of a Minneapolis police officer from the board (Inspector Todd Loining had been on the board since 2016) and providing a nature-based respite for organizers of color at ESNS’s Camp Bovey.
The statement also expressed a broader commitment of making sure that the organization’s future work is “explicitly anti-racist,” setting aside resources for “deeper anti-racism training” for the board, and expansion of internal equity and inclusion work.
Perhaps most notable, and a springboard for looking at the larger issues surrounding racism and social service agencies, the statement acknowledged the organization’s past contribution to systemic racism: “We recognize that we haven’t been on the forefront of the fight against racism, even though our mission is to build pathways to equity by disrupting social and economic barriers,” the statement reads.
It continues with an even wider-reaching assessment: “East Side Neighborhood Services, and social work as a practice, have historically perpetuated harm to people of color.”
How to serve, not harm?
In what ways has the structure of social service agencies and the delivery of services harmed communities of color? And what changes could and should be instituted to remedy this? What actually can disrupt social and economic barriers?
In an interview, East Side’s President Kristine Martin explained that much of the social work practices over the last hundred years have been structured with a “Eurocentric or white-centric” approach, not through the lens of the people served.
“We’ve accepted money for 100 years to do things that are not necessarily compatible with culture. … We go after government support, foundation dollars, where the outcomes are decided by people who aren’t necessarily walking in the shoes of a poor person or a new immigrant. So we accept the money and then we follow the money and we follow the outcomes without ever really understanding if that is consistent with that person’s cultural beliefs,” Martin said.
ESNS started as a settlement house in the early 1900s, helping Eastern European immigrants integrate into life in this country, and for more than 100 years has served the metro area, currently with food support, employment and training programs, and services for seniors and for families affected by domestic violence. It holds employment and training programs, has a child care and development center and runs an alternative high school that’s part of the Minneapolis school district.
Pillsbury United Communities (PUC) in North Minneapolis is also a broad-reaching nonprofit that runs four community centers, dozens of programs ranging from legal support to truancy prevention to food shelves, and sponsors several enterprises, including a grocery store, a bicycle repair shop, a newspaper (North News), a theater and a radio station.
Adair Mosley, president and CEO of PUC, in an interview discussed another aspect of how social services have perpetuated harm. “The premise of social services was built on our charity infrastructure,” he said. Although charity will always be needed in any community, that charity mindset creates dependency, and over time it doesn’t address what social and economic mobility needs to look like, particularly for low income individuals, he explained.
“We need infrastructure that’s thinking about … wealth creation, financial inclusion, the things that get us up that social and economic mobility ladder, and that’s systems work.” Systems work – changing funding mechanisms, policies and infrastructure – is the “work that’s left on the table,” Mosley said.
He talked about the creation in 2017 of North Market, a grocery store in the Camden neighborhood, with an adjacent North Memorial wellness center. The community said they wanted access to healthy food and was concerned about the oversaturation of convenience stores, Mosley said. “We could have responded to that in a charity infrastructure, which is a food shelf. But our response to that was a grocery store. That starts to change the economic fabric of a community. That offers workforce solutions.”
Excluding the input of the community that is served is another way that social service agencies often fall short, both Martin and Mosley said. Partially addressing that shortcoming, the ESNS June 16 statement includes the commitment to create policies that ensure that board positions are reserved for past or current participants in the nonprofit’s programs.
“People who have been pushed to the margins will know what they need for their lives to be better,” Mosley said. “If we’re going to truly stand up opportunity in our communities, we’re going to have to listen.” He talked about developing programs using the assets of the community and approaching change with a whole-systems, “appreciative inquiry” framework – a philosophy of studying the best and positive in a system and moving toward that in the process of change.
“We’re going to have to frame it as though communities are not broken. They’re fragile, and they’re fragile because of the things that we impose on them. We haven’t been able to foster the level of resiliency that communities need in order to thrive, because we’ve put an ecosystem around them that is extremely fragile,” Mosley said.
First steps
Martin talked frankly about the process of ESNS drafting the statement following Floyd’s death being one of discovery. “There has been a focus on training staff on equity issues, which is very important work to do internally. But we hadn’t yet gotten to the point where we had released an equity statement.”
“We as an organization needed to be out front … from our place of mission and purposes and values, say to the community through a written statement, what we believed and what was infuriating, or what was intolerable about what had just happened. What became clear is that we weren’t exactly sure how to say it, what to say.”
ESNS did have a strategic priority in place, she said, about understanding race and cultural competency and how the organization “either supports equity or gets in the way of equity initiatives.” She said the commitments in the June 16 statement will be incorporated as they craft a new strategic plan.
Implementation will be aided by an unexpected donation of $375,000 from Canadian Pacific Railway. ESNS, along with Lake Street Council and Equal Justice Initiative received a total of $1 million. The gifts were unsolicited and announced June 4. According to the press release, Canadian Pacific wanted to support the people of Minneapolis, as well as support “meaningful positive change nationally.”
Mary Ostapenko Anstett, ESNS’s senior advancement officer shared that the focus of the use of the funds will be equity, diversity and inclusion, and they will be applied to internal improvements, including diversity, equity and inclusion training for staff and board. They also will be used to improve client services in the areas of food delivery (ESNS provides food support to the residents of 45 high-rise low income housing buildings in the metro area, as well as running other food support programs), a family healing program for families affected by domestic violence, and to fund the Camp Bovey respite offerings for people of color.
She also said that some of the funds will go toward “reinvesting in community relationships,” which will include looking closely at the organizations ESNS partners with. “We want to make sure that the community feels welcome and that our partnerships reflect that.”
Below: Kristine Martin and Adair Mosley (provided photos). Shibru Meshesha fills boxes with food for distribution to seniors at an East Side Neighborhood Services food shelf at 1801 Central Ave.NE. North Market, a grocery store and wellness center in North Minneapolis, is a nonprofit business venture of Pillsbury United Communities. (Photos by Karen Kraco)