King County's first Equity & Social Justice Strategic Plan: We want to hear from local organizations!
King County is in the early stages of developing an
actionable, countywide strategic plan to advance Equity and Social
Justice in our region. We need your input to ensure the plan
is informed and grounded in the true needs and opportunities within
communities, as well as how the county can act as a responsive and effective
partner.
We are
asking organizations in all sectors to please go to our survey to share your ideas on how to
increase equity in King County. Let us know what issues
we should collectively tackle, what's working to increase equity, and what are
emerging opportunities. We also want your ideas about how we can collectively
partner to advance equity in our region.
We will continue to stay in touch about this process as
we collectively shape priorities and strategies.
Best Starts
for Kids initiative on November ballot
 The Metropolitan King County Council voted 8-1 to put Best Starts for Kids on the November 3, 2015 ballot, giving voters the opportunity to transform the way we invest in our children's future.
The proposed six-year levy -- which would cost the average King County homeowner about $1 each week -- would fund prevention and early intervention strategies designed to increase the likelihood that our young people reach adulthood healthy and able to achieve their full potential.
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Best Starts for Kids is informed by research by James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economics
professor whose findings confirm what we knew intuitively: Early investment in
a child's development -- starting with prenatal programs -- delivers the
greatest return:
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Progressing Toward One King County
King County Executive Dow Constantine, joined by
community leaders and Councilmembers Larry Gossett,
Larry Phillips and Rod Dembowski, recently signed two pieces of
legislation to ensure new residents have a voice in our government and the
opportunity to succeed. One was an ordinance expanding access to voting
materials for county residents, and the other established a task for
immigrants and refugees.
Voting Rights
Fifty years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed
the Federal Voting Rights Act into law, the King County Council
unanimously approved broadening the historic law’s standards by requiring voting materials be translated into additional
languages, starting with Spanish and Korean. The Voting Rights Act requires that jurisdictions
provide language assistance to voters if more than 10,000 members or 5 percent
of the voting age citizens are members of a single-language group who
do not “speak or understand English adequately enough to participate in the
electoral process.” The new legislation adds Spanish and Korean to the list of languages that will be translated for the 2016 general election; Chinese and Vietnamese are already on this list. Other languages may be added starting in 2017.
Immigrant
and Refugee Task Force
A second piece of legislation adopted by the Council
establishes a task force to investigate the need for an Immigrant and
Refugee Commission to focus on these populations, ensuring they have
fair and equitable access to county services.
“King County’s growth has been driven by immigration for the past
25 years, and one-quarter of county residents speak a language other than
English at home. Yet many immigrants and refugees don't have the same access to
opportunities. This ordinance moves us a step closer to ensuring that every new
resident has a voice in our government,” said County Executive, Dow
Constantine.
Task force members must be leaders within immigrant and refugee
communities, have expertise in immigrant or refugee issues, and have the
ability to engage relevant communities in identifying desirable characteristics
of a commission. The task force will convene by October 1, 2015 and will
actively solicit community comments through open public forums
and electronic communication.
Ending racial disparity in the juvenile justice system
 Executive Constantine joined with Superior Court Judge Susan
Craighead and members of the County Council to announce a countywide steering
committee charged with recommending solutions to a growing racial disparity in
the regional juvenile justice system.
"Racial disparity has no place in our justice system,
especially not in a system responsible for the well-being of our youth,"
said the Executive. "Making the system impervious to the mostly unacknowledged,
but nevertheless real biases that each of us carries with us is a tall order,
and will require the partnership of everyone in our community."
The Juvenile
Justice Equity Steering Committee represents the largest and
most diverse group the County has ever assembled to end racial disparity in the
juvenile justice system. Among its members are parents, youth (including
youth that have experienced juvenile detention), mental health and grassroots
leaders. They are teaming up with the heads of school districts, law
enforcement agencies and courts from across the County.
In King County, the number of secure detentions of youth has been reduce by nearly three-fourths, from a high of 205 youth in 2000 to as few as 45 in 2014. However, there is the disturbing fact that youth of color, and African American youth in particular, are now a substantially greater proportion of the youth incarcerated today.
For more information and updates on King County's efforts to reduce its youth detention population and disproportionality, visit KCYouthJustice.com,
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COMING UP
Call for literary/spoken word artists for King County’s Equity and Social Justice project
 King County seeks up to eight individual literary artists to participate in readings as part of its Cultivating a Culture of Equity and Social Justice through Literature and Poetry project, which begins later this year. The artists should offer through poetry, spoken word, fiction, or essay their perspectives on race, racial identity, and the personal, social, and cultural ramifications of such constructs. More detail and submission guidelines can be found here.
Deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. Sept. 14.
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