About
Race Forward’s Place-Based Strategies aims to bridge the efforts of community and public institutions to produce collaborative governing power that is strong enough to deliver on the promise of a multiracial democracy.
We help our partners:
BUILD knowledge, skills, and capacity to use new tools and practices to advance racial justice.
ORGANIZE to grow shared power, analyze structural racial inequality, and align relationships and strategies for change.
CATALYZE the power of civic institutions and community coalitions to work collaboratively in creating transformative solutions and making sustainable impact.
Tool Spotlight: Co-Governance Tool for a Multiracial Democracy
AFTER GENERATIONS OF STRUGGLE AND SACRIFICE – a democracy that truly works for our multiracial nation remains a beautiful yet unfulfilled dream. Strengthening democracy requires us to build people’s faith in government and the potential for collective action to meet shared needs and improve real outcomes in people’s lives. This understanding has led us to more deeply explore the concept of co-governance and how it can work in service of our pursuit for racial justice.
As outlined in our report with Partners for Dignity and Rights, “Co-Governing for a Multiracial Democracy,” co-governance is a collection of participatory models and practices in which government and communities intentionally aim to share power to drive fair and just outcomes. When rooted in racial justice, co-governance is more than a mashup of the concepts of collaboration and governance. Co-governance calls for sharing power and centering community leadership and impact, particularly with people who are most harmed by structural racism and systems of inequity.
Now, Race Forward is excited to present our new “Co-Governance Tool for a Multiracial Democracy,” a toolkit designed to meet the needs of on-the-ground practitioners in answering the question, “HOW can we build authentic, sustainable, power-sharing relationships between government and community that drive toward racial justice?”
Please take time to explore the tool and the accompanying resources from across the field, use it in your work, and share it with others in your network.
Place Spotlight: Colibri, Monterrey County, CA
Over the past ten years, Race Forward has supported community power building in Monterey County, CA. The work began by convening resident and local government leaders in the city of Salinas, CA, to address local racialized violence and economic tensions. The purpose of the gathering was to collectively envision ways to advance racial justice. This approach is documented in a report called Building the We: Healing-Informed Governing for Racial Equity.
Most recently community residents and staff from local government and school districts have been working collaboratively, forming COLIBRI (Collectively Organizing for Liberation, Inclusion and Breaking Inequities). The group has been conducting a root cause systems analysis to inform the design of racial equity goals and action plans across several issue areas.
Check out our resources
Creating Cultures and Practices for Racial Equity Toolkit.
When designed for arts and cultural institutions, this toolkit can be adopted by other organizations who wish to implement a practice of racial equity.
Co-Governing Toward Multiracial Democracy
Co-Governing Toward Multiracial Democracy features powerful models of collaborative governance led by communities of color across the country.