I think about my own experience when I was in high school. And when you're a Black woman who's divorced, it's even harder to navigate within systems. And when you divorce, it's very difficult to navigate within systems. I am the daughter of a woman who had her own business when she was in New Orleans and married a person, came to the Pacific Northwest and got divorced. Debra Entenman, Kent: What I can say is this: I come from a family of educated people. Would you be comfortable sharing an example of how racism has impacted you? We really also need to look at our education system and how is it serving our Black youth? Are we getting pushed out of the education system? So for me, it's really trying to home in on how all these policies interplay with each other, and how we have a holistic plan as we are working to address them, sometimes separately. I also think that we need to continue to work for the Black community to increase access to the economic development options and opportunities that are afforded to other communities in ways that we've been locked out of. Jamila Taylor, Federal Way (chair of the Black Members Caucus): I think we still have a significant amount of work to do on police accountability and police reform. Change has happened in the state of Washington by electing representation. We can see that now we have passed the state equity office and the police accountability bills. And with that we bring our life experiences to those tables, those inner circle tables to start changing legislation that affects the very communities that we're representing. Our Members of Color caucus 19 members strong and our Black Members Caucus has nine. Melanie Morgan, Tukwila: I believe that the change started in 2018 in the state of Washington when we started electing more people to represent the actual communities that are there. How is the caucus as a whole, and how are the individual members, changing the conversation and narrative around racial equity? The Black Members Caucus nearly doubled in size this year and now has nine members.
T’wina Nobles was unavailable.) Here are excerpts from those interviews, edited for clarity. Over the past month-and-a-half the public radio Northwest News Network has engaged the members of the Black Members Caucus in conversation. So how are these members changing the conversation at the state Capitol? And what policy changes are they seeking? The growing racial diversity of the Washington Legislature comes at a time of racial reckoning and demands for police reform and other systemic changes. Now there are nine Black members – eight in the House, one in the Senate - and they’ve formed their own caucus. It wasn’t that long ago that just three of Washington’s 147 state lawmakers were Black.
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