Skip to Content
Streetsblog USA home
Streetsblog USA home
Log In
Equity

PoC Leaders Demand Anti-Racism from Transportation Community

A group shot from the Untokening 2016 Atlanta Conference. Follow and support their work here.

People of color in the transportation industry are calling on their white counterparts to make concrete, public commitments to confront their history of racism and join BIPOC in building an antiracist transportation landscape — and shared many resources authored by their fellow PoC leaders to help them do that vital work.

Here's Tamika Butler, who is the director of equity and inclusion as well as the director of planning for California at Toole Design, sharing wisdom for organizations whose recent solidarity statements rang hollow. (Leaders outside the transportation space should listen to this message, too.)

Naomi Doerner, a core organizer of mobility-justice collective The Untokening, also challenged organizations to ask themselves a deeper set of questions in this public facebook post.

Source: Naomi Doerner
Source: Naomi Doerner
Source: Naomi Doerner

Keith Benjamin, director of the Charleston, S.C., Department of Transportation, gave white leaders an enormous gift: a playbook of resources authored primarily by people of color to help apply an antiracist lens to their work. Here's the start of the thread to whet your appetite, but we recommend clicking through and reading the whole thing.

Countless other resources are available on Twitter, including resources for those in all the built-environment professions who want to take antiracist action — we highly recommend exploring the Twitter feeds of leading BIPOC urbanists like these.

You can learn more about the work of Tamika, Keith and Naomi at their social-media accounts linked above, and you can become a sponsor of The Untokening here. 

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog USA

America’s Kids Deserve Better Than a Waymo Subscription

What do America's young people lose when they have to buy independence from a corporation that rents out driverless cars?

July 15, 2025

Tuesday’s Headlines Aren’t Falling Fast Enough

Pedestrian deaths dropped by 4 percent last year, but remain well above pre-pandemic figures.

July 15, 2025

Monday’s Headlines Are Dragging Their Feet

The Trump administration claims the Biden administration left them with a backlog — but they've actually been far slower at getting transportation money to states than their predecessors, a new analysis finds.

July 14, 2025

These U.S. Communities’ So-Called ‘Complete Streets’ Policies Don’t Even Deserve the Name

Any city can call itself a "Complete Streets" champion. But not all of them are walking the walk — and if they don't, a top organization says they'll no longer give them a platform on its esteemed "best of" ranking.

July 14, 2025

Communities Rally To Reclaim Streets From ICE Terror

"This is an attack on Los Angeles. This is an attack on California. On all of us."

July 11, 2025

Friday Video: The London Neighborhood Where Bikes Outnumber Cars

...and how they got to that impressive milestone.

July 11, 2025
See all posts