The Blue Line Extension has been in the works in Minneapolis-St. Paul for over a decade. For at least that long, Blue Line Extension corridor communities have been challenging government and private sector actors to be considerate of the local population to ensure that they are not displaced as a result of development. This work requires thinking more complexly about how histories of redlining, racial covenants, unjust housing practices, and other histories of racialized policies play a role in the outcomes of government investment today. More specifically, community members throughout this corridor see that without strong anti-displacement interventions, the Blue Line Extension project will only serve the population of people that replaces them after they are displaced.
The Blue Line Extension Anti-Displacement work, led by the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota, seeks to support and leverage resources for the benefit of BIPOC communities and other historically marginalized communities that have been left out of Minnesota’s prosperity.
During this session, Lee Guekguezian (Program Coordinator, Community-Based Research Programs) and C. Terrence Anderson (Director, Community-Based Research Programs) will share how CURA utilized its Reparative Justice Framework and Organizing Philosophy, which ensures that stakeholders are treated with dignity and offered agency. With BIPOC participants at the center of reimagined structures, CURA sought to create a project structure that allowed community stakeholders to co-create the questions and solutions.
By contextualizing displacement in the Twin Cities through research and creating a work group that elevated community agency and capacity, we were ultimately able to co-create a report and policy recommendations that would lead to important community-defined outcomes.
About this group:
We are a group of data users in Connecticut who are supporting one another as we work toward more equitable data practices. We focus on racial equity explicitly but not exclusively.
Some of the topics we talk about include:
How can we make sure we don't make certain groups invisible through how we disaggregate our data?
How can we learn to focus our attention on the strengths, rather than the deficits, of groups we are seeking to serve or support?
How can we learn from the people who we hope will benefit from our products or services about what their data means to them?
How can we help the institutions that we are part of to be trustworthy so that people will trust us with their information/data?
You can read more about our past events here.
Please feel free to check out the group. And if it is helpful, please share it!