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

PoC Leaders Demand Anti-Racism from Transportation Community

4:13 PM EDT on June 3, 2020

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

Want a Better 15-Minute City? Ask Residents What They Really Want

A new study from Bogotá models how other cities can ask a deeper set of questions about how to put essential needs within walking, biking or transit distance.

March 19, 2024

Tuesday’s Headlines Win the Gold

Two articles detail efforts in Paris and Los Angeles to put on (relatively) climate-friendly Olympic games in 2024 and 2028.

March 19, 2024

Monday’s Headlines Drink Your Milkshake

How does a president end wasteful subsidies for the highly profitable fossil fuel industry? Many have tried, but none have succeeded, including Joe Biden.

March 18, 2024

How — and Why — To Start a Neighborhood E-Bike Library

American advocates are loaning out e-bikes to their neighbors — and creating flocks of new riders.

March 18, 2024

What Urbanists’ Doug Burgum Lovefest Reveals About the ‘Why’ Behind Our Advocacy

I am far less interested in talking about Gov. Doug Burgum's politics than talking about his values, and how those values shape his urbanism, and thus the actual lives of the people he governs.

March 15, 2024
See all posts