Dear Owners, 

I am personally motivated to address our shortcomings in terms of racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion at the Co-op, and I want to thank those of you who have recently reached out with your concerns. Here is an update on what we’re working on now and our long-term commitments to address personal, interpersonal, and organizational racism* at Willy Street Co-op. 

Working On Now

• Engaging an outside facilitator to lead a candid staff discussion(s) about organizational racism at Willy Street Co-op. We will determine the format of the discussion and means for participating and providing input after getting recommendations from the facilitator.  We will ensure all staff have the option to submit questions, concerns, or suggestions for consideration anonymously if that is what they prefer. The facilitator will put together information from the discussion to share with our employees, Board, and with the outside consultant we engage to help us with the process of addressing personal, interpersonal, and organizational racism at the Co-op. 
• Some actions that happened recently or are now happening include:
  • Accepting donations at the registers for 9 organizations and matching them up to $20,000 (increased from $10,000).
  • Donation drive for products to be distributed to a variety of neighborhoods in the Twin Cities impacted by the murder of George Floyd and subsequent uprising for Black lives and civil rights. The Co-op contributed $1,152 worth of products in addition to supplies donated by customers and community members.
  • Donated an internship scholarship to the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County ($618.23).
  • Reviewing the Madison Black Chamber of Commerce list of businesses for consideration of new local product and service vendors.
  • Expediting consideration and processing of donations to local Black-led organizations holding events promoting anti-racism, lifting Black lives, supporting protesters, and/or encouraging police accountability.
  • Reading, watching, and listening to comments shared on our social media posts and on our staff intranet forum, articles, books, videos, webinars and other sources for consideration of ideas for actions, processes, and policies that identify and rectify instances of our organizational racism. 
• We are also in the process of recruiting for our vacant Human Resources Director position. We have updated the requirements to include experience working in multicultural environments and experience leading organizational initiatives for equity, diversity and inclusion. In the past, these qualifications were desired, and not required.

Long-Term Commitments

Below is a list of areas that we will start (or restart, in some cases) working on to address organizational racism at Willy Street Co-op. We know this list will grow as we dedicate much more time, energy, money, and focus to these areas than we have in the past.

• Review Co-op policies, prioritizing these:
  • onboarding of new staff members
  • training of staff members: how we train on job tasks; how we train employees to recognize and address both explicit and implicit personal bias; and how we communicate the Co-op’s role in identifying and addressing systemic racism in our workplace and our community
  • identifying and addressing how racial bias impacts decisions made by the Board, managers, and employees, both internally and with our customers
  • improving and further identifying means to address bias, microaggressions, and conflict with and between customers
  • addressing concerns from people of color
• Review our hiring process, including:
  • where and how we post job openings
  • our job application
  • our screening process
  • our job interview process
• Solicit concerns, questions, and suggested improvements from staff members and customers who are people of color in a manner that preserves their privacy, and responds in a way that better acknowledges their experience and addresses concerns.

We will share this list with the outside consultant we hire to help us implement all of these systems (and others we add) in an anti-racist manner. This work will be reflected in our list of strategic priorities that guide our most important work for the fiscal year, and will remain in our strategic priorities into the future.

We will provide you with progress updates as we move forward with our work. 

Anya 

* We use the term “racism” to denote the combination of race-based bias (which all people have to a greater or lesser extent) and a cultural system that specifically benefits white people. “Organizational racism” means “the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through the unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping that disadvantage minority ethnic people.” (from Dimensions of Racism, proceedings of a Workshop to commemorate the end of the United Nations Third Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, 2003)