Our Commitments
About Our Commitments:
Our commitments were written in the ancestral lands of the Pomo, Coast Miwok, and Wappo people. Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos (SC|SU) is a coalition of community leaders and partner organizations in Sonoma County working together to eliminate adverse childhood experiences and trauma caused by social determinants of health and racism. We do this by supporting trauma-informed organizational capacity, healing centered engagement, and coordinating community resources and connecting these to the people who need them. Through our commitments to equity we hope to ensure communities most impacted by structural inequities reclaim decision-making power to create change.
These commitments were co-created with members of our Community Accountability Action Team and will remain a living document and resource, accessible to our network and any partner organization who wishes to use them as a framework or a reference for their own equity work.
We want to express special thanks to the Botanical Bus for inspiring us to make our own Equity Commitments and giving us permission to borrow from their structure.
Why are these commitments necessary?
1
Equity challenges persist in Sonoma County
A Portrait of Sonoma County: 2021 Update (the Portrait) revealed glaring racial inequities in life expectancy, education, and earnings most significantly for the Black community, Latinx community and other communities often excluded from critical decisions that impact their health and long-term wellbeing.
2
Our health, education, and government systems were not originally designed to serve and benefit Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
3
Too often those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions yet furthest from resources and power.
4
Because we operate in a society that historically has not valued BIPOC lives, we can knowingly and unknowingly perpetuate structural inequities and racism, and we must hold our values and commitments close to our work to disrupt oppression.
5
Our core strategies, such as implementing a technology platform to connect community members to resources, have significant potential to de-silo systems and reduce racial/class disparities in access to care. However, if this work is not grounded in equity we risk maintaining the status quo or upholding systems that do not work for everyone.
Continuously examine whether our actions are aligned with our commitments
Review our commitments annually for updates, revisions, or realignment
Use our commitments as a reference for our work across Action Teams and programs
Provide our commitments as an accessible resource for network partners who want to create their own
How should our commitments be practiced?
Our Commitments
Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos acknowledges that there is systemic, institutional, and interpersonal racism that create racial disparities across entire systems. This can result in underutilized services, services that are not culturally appropriate or effective with all populations, and make it difficult to prevent complex health and social problems such as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). At Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos we are challenging current systems, practices and procedures in order to address institutional racism, dismantle systems and policies in order to remove barriers and create organizational and institutional change. Therefore we:
1
Listen
Listen to the local Indigenous tribes to whom this land belongs to. Express gratitude and appreciation to those whose territory we reside on so we honor and acknowledge the Indigenous people who have been living and taking care of the land
Listen to local communities on the margins and hold space to center community voice
Provide listening space for our network to share equity challenges and/or developments in diversity, equity, and belonging in their organizations and the community at-large
2
Learn
Provide training and learning opportunities for our network on equity challenges, diversity, equity, and belong, and/or other pertinent community topics whenever we identify a gap in knowledge
Learn to have difficult and heavy conversations regarding race, racism, systems change, and accountability
Learn that in order to dismantle systems, we must first do the work internally to improve and better ourselves
3
Practice
Support organizational, workforce, and leadership development for BIPOC communities in the county
Practice transparency by sharing developments and updates in the work of Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos and the implementation of the Resource Connection Network
Practice community governance in our Action Teams and workgroups and give community decision-making power in our work before implementing any new procedure or practice
Practice anti-racist, human-centered healing practices by slowing down when we need to, reinforcing the idea that rest is resistance, and allowing ourselves to regulate our stress response when we are dysregulated
Key Definitions
Anti-racism: Active process of fighting against racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies & procedures, behaviors and attitudes.
Equity: Removing the predictability of health, well-being, and wealth based on social background or factors.
Land Acknowledgement
Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos acknowledges that we are on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok, Pomo, and Wappo people, who are the original caretakers of this land and who have a deep connection to their land and actively work to preserve and protect it. We celebrate their cultural and spiritual traditions, and we also recognize the harm that has been caused by the invasion of indigenous land, the violent removal of indigenous people from their land, and the forced assimilation of indigenous people. Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos is committed to partner with local tribes to create more equitable systems for Sonoma County communities to access services, resources, and support. We commit to including and lifting indigenous voices in our decision-making process, and to building relational trust through community engagement.