A letter from CICF leadership
The Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) staff and board of directors resoundingly applaud the Indianapolis City-County Council for unanimously adopting the Special Resolution on Feb. 24, 2020, in support of a public commitment to addressing the historical inequities of race, place and identity throughout our City-County government. For far too long, racist systems, institutions and structures have not been inadvertent oversights, but intentional barriers put and kept in place to extinguish opportunity and humanity from people of color, LGBTQ individuals, people with disabilities, families experiencing poverty and many other marginalized populations.
This has led to generations of Hoosiers with purposefully designed inequitable access to education, jobs, housing, healthcare and so much more. This has led to Black residents of Indianapolis, on average, dying up to 14 years earlier than White residents because of these inequities. This has led to the vast majority of Black students in all 11 school districts in our city to have lower academic outcomes than their White counterparts. This has led to the average Black worker in Indianapolis making 56-cents-on-the-dollar of the average White worker. This has led to an unforgivable percentage of Black men in Indiana being incarcerated—five times more than Whites—and families’ lives ruined.
We pledge our continued support and vocal leadership as we all must work together to dismantle the barriers and empower our neighbors for a truly inclusive city…
The City-County Council and Mayor Hogsett’s commitment to dismantling racist policies and practices that lead to these racial disparities is an amazing first step. Thank you for working across departments and agencies to identify the specific issues to address and to name and measure key indicators toward success. CICF was proud to initiate this work by providing grant funding for dozens of municipal leaders to go through the first phase of Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) training. We pledge our continued support and vocal leadership as we all must work together to dismantle the barriers and empower our neighbors for a truly inclusive city where all residents have an equitable opportunity to reach their full potential—no matter place, race or identity.
Sincerely,
Gregory F. Hahn
Chair
Central Indiana Community Foundation
Brian Payne
President and CEO
Central Indiana Community Foundation
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