(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to "At Issue," I'm H. Wayne Wilson.

Thank you as always for joining us for our conversation on important issues affecting central Illinois.

And one of those occurred in July of 2021, when a group of community leaders formed the Peoria City County Joint Commission for Racial Justice and Equity.

And there were many goals set out for that and one of those goals was to file periodic reports.

Well, the first major report came out just this year and to have a report on that report, we have invited the two co-chairs of the organization to be on.

First of all, let me introduce you to Mary Peterson, the co-chair of the Joint Commission on Racial Justice and Equity.

Thank you for being with us.

- Thank you.

- And her co-chair is Tim Bertschy.

Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you, H. - And then I've asked the president of the Peoria branch of the NAACP to join us, Pastor Marvin Hightower, thank you for joining us on "At Issue."

- Certainly.

- And just to be clear, Pastor is not a member of the Commission, but of course as the leader of the NAACP here in Peoria, he is very interested, let me put it that way.

- Yes.

- And let me start with you, Pastor, because before we get into the eight subcommittees and what the commission is doing right now and what the goals are for the future, I do want to do a little bit of history, just briefly to bring us up to speed.

There have been problems in the central Illinois region.

I think there's a misconception that Illinois was a free state from the get-go, and that's not necessarily the case depending on what region you were in.

There were Jim Crow laws, there was redlining in Peoria.

Can you give us a little bit of just a brief history?

- Oh yes.

It's definitely been, although Illinois was a free state, it still had its issues.

And just look around at the Underground Railroad conductor sites that's been recently, that we've been involved in.

They're all around us, even in the city of Pekin, they're all around us.

There's been abolitionists and those working toward equity and equality since the freeing of slaves.

You gotta remember when Lincoln freed the slaves, where would they go?

They've only been to one place, which was that plantation that they lived on.

What would they do?

So we've been trying to write the laws that came out of slavery, since then, since the freeing of the slaves.

So there always have been organizations and individuals trying to help achieve that goal.

- One of the recognizable names in the Underground Railroad history is Moses Pettengill.

In fact, there is a statue outside the Civic Center dedicated to the house that he and his wife had.

And he was part of the Underground Railroad and actually was arrested for his activities in that.

Before we get into the Commission's duties, there have been organizations in Peoria, the Afro-American League of Peoria was formed back in 1885, dedicated to trying to, maybe they didn't use the word back then, but equity.

- Yes, yes.

No doubt.

Actually it's the springboard of the foundation of the NAACP because the NAACP was born out of that foundation.

One being that organization which morphed into another organization, which became the Niagara Movement.

And then when in 1908, when they had the riots in Springfield, the Niagara Movement went to New York, or Canada, and they formed what now is the NAACP.

- And the Peoria branch was 1915?

- 1915, so we're six years younger than the National Association.

So we've been around, we're one of the oldest branches in the association.

- Let me turn to Tim to just a bit of recent history as to the evolution of this Commission.

How did this come about?

- Before she was mayor, Mayor Ali was talking with people within the city government and county government.

And as a result of those conversations, which were spurred on by the horrific incidents that preceded to, at that point of 2021, I'm talking about of course, George Floyd, et cetera.

In those conversations, the concept was what are we going to do about it here?

We feel we need to take some major step to address racism and its impact upon this community.

What is it that we're gonna do?

And coming out of that was the concept of forming a commission that was jointly formed by the city and the county to address these issues.

- And Mary, this, to be clear, this isn't to try to bring equity and inclusion to county government or city government specific, I mean, them alone, because it is to address the inequities across the region.

- Correct.

Correct.

But we know that when you talk about equity, you have to start where the laws are made.

You have to start where the assessments are made and making those equitable.

And then with the desire that you will spread it, not only throughout the region, but you'll spread it individually and family, community-wide.

And that's, I'm sorry.

I was gonna say and that's why we have community members that are a part of this commission.

160, we started out with 160 community members, both from the city side and the county side.

- Distributed amongst eight different subcommittees?

- [Mary] Correct.

- Okay.

- [Mary] Correct.

- Tim, I thought maybe we'd set the stage with statistics.

And of course you've collected many statistics to, I guess, to create a baseline?

Is that fair, Mary, a baseline, so you you can measure the future versus what would be the past?

- And not only that, in our conversations with other communities that have been doing this work, they say you have to gather the data.

And they were speaking more specifically about quantitative data, but also with the understanding we need qualitative data as well.

But you have to collect the quantitative 'cause you have to write, you have to show the picture black and white.

- So let me, we put together three slides to show the difference in three different areas.

The first one, Tim, is households receiving food assistance.

We have white, 14.5%, but Blacks, 47.4%.

And then Hispanics, 23.2%, a huge discrepancy, 14.5 to 47.4.

- Yeah.

It is a huge discrepancy.

And this is gonna be replayed out in all the statistics that we had.

There are many reasons, as you've indicated already, and as Mary has addressed, about why we did a baseline first.

One of them was to show to the community that there is a substantial racial disparity issue within our community.

- [H] And life expectancy is another one?

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

The difference there is I think, if memory serves, is like 80, 79 years for white.

- [H] 64 for.

- Right.

And when you, if you're a mathematician and you break that down, you see is is that the white life expectancy is a quarter to a third longer than it is for Black parents.

- [H] And then moving to median household value.

$130,000 for a white family, a Black family, 76,400, Hispanic 96,800.

Again, large discrepancy.

- Absolutely.

And of course, house value is a huge indicator of overall worth, net worth of a family.

Many families, that is the greatest asset that they have.

So this is, as you said, another substantial indicator of disparity.

- Mary, these are just three snapshots.

It's much broader than that.

Can you give us, and not necessarily in numbers, maybe you can throw some numbers in there, but let's not get too bogged down in numbers.

How much of a problem do we have when it comes to equity?

- Well, as you mentioned earlier, we have eight subcommittees that looked at various areas.

And out of every last one of those, there was a major disparity.

So our child and youth development committee, economic development and jobs, environment and climate, health and human services, housing, quality housing, information and technology, justice system, and transportation and mobility.

And in every last one of those there was a disparity between whites and people of color, more specifically, Blacks.

- And I want to get into each of the eight subcommittees but before we do that, the Commission alone, 160 people, cannot make the changes that are necessary.

And I'll continue with you, Mary, if I may, how broad do we need to reach out?

Who needs to get involved in this?

And I don't mean necessarily on the Commission itself, but who needs to say, "Yes, there's a problem and I can help adjust."

I can, maybe I have this implicit bias, I don't even realize it, maybe.

- We all do.

What are we, I think Peoria is some 118,000 people?

And when you add the county area into it, it may take us to.

- [H] 182.

- Okay.

So 182 people need to be.

- Hundred, 182,000.

- That's thousand, I'm sorry, that 182,000 need to be involved in this.

We have to own this as a community in order to make change.

When we have, where it's only a few people, you can't make widespread change.

And it has to change here, here, with all of us in understanding that.

- I wanna go into the eight subcommittees but first a little perspective from the pastor.

- [Marvin] Yes.

- You've headed the local branch for several years now.

How much of a struggle has it been?

I mean, you're not sitting there just treading water, you're trying to make changes.

You made sure that the city and the county now both have DEI officers.

What struggles have you faced in trying to bring attention to this issue?

- Well, I mean it's our feeling that if the city and the county begin this work, the private industry will follow suit or other governmental organizations will follow the suit.

And so with that said, that's why we began meeting with the city when they chose to hire a DEI officer, then we began working with the county to do the same thing because those two entities are powerful.

And as she said, policies are set there.

And so what we found out is that a lot of the things that we thought we had overcome, we were, in fact, had not overcome and the numbers are showing that.

One thing data does, it takes the emotion out and it gives you the facts.

And so now we have a place where we can start to work from, we already knew it, but now it's showing us, empirically, that we do have these disparities.

And it's specifically, primarily, hitting the Black community, as you can tell.

And we are only 27% of this population.

- [H] In the city.

- In the city, but then you count the county, we probably are significant lower.

So you have to realize, and we have to realize, that it's not a them and their problem it's a us and our problem, that we all have to address these issues together.

- And for the audience's benefit, when you hear DEI, that's diversity, equity and inclusion.

Tim, let me turn to you for, not in any particular order, but the child and youth development subcommittee, can you give us a perspective on where we are and where we need to go?

That might be too big of a question, but.

- H, they've been looking primarily at development of youth in education and looking at readiness from kindergarten through eighth grade.

And what they've seen, is that while there is a discrepancy between white and people of color at kindergarten preparation stage, that that difference grows markedly through the grades.

So the question is why, why is that?

Is it schools?

Is it the access to resources, like say the internet, which is so important today to education.

What is it that's causing it?

So they're looking at that issue this year.

- One of the things that, in doing my homework, that I found was that with several of these subcommittees, Mary, that the term parental involvement, more parental involvement is necessary.

That may be a tough nut to crack.

You're talking about families.

How do you go about making sure that families realize that, number one, there's an effort to do this and that you need to be part of this so that your child, your cousin, et cetera, has a chance, an opportunity?

- Well, I think, one, we need to change how we define family.

People oftentimes think family is a husband, wife and the children.

In the African American community, it was villages that raised children.

You may have had both parents, but you also had the grandparents.

You had the aunts and the uncles that were in close proximity that helped with that.

And it was viewed as an asset and not a liability.

So one, start changing the definition of family, so the children don't feel like they don't have a family like others.

Two, I think it's about education but we have to provide equity in terms of the housing, the education, the income.

In talking about income, one of the things that the economic and development committee found was that the median household income for whites was $63,100.

For Blacks, it was $30,400.

And for Latinos, it was $42,700.

- So Blacks was one half of whites in round numbers.

- Yes, yes, yes.

And so when you start talking about that and you start talking about family and you start talking about learning, if there's already that disparity in the household, in the income in the household and the value of the household as well, people are already starting at a deficit and now you're talking about, the moving forward, but the playing field again still not being level, being equitable.

- So the economic development and jobs subcommittee has that to tackle.

- [Mary] Yes.

- And Pastor, that creates an issue in that when someone wants to come out of an area, a family and get a job and contribute back into the community, they might live, not just in poverty, but they might live in a dangerous neighborhood.

- Sure.

- They don't have a role model.

- Sure.

And I think one thing we need to do is define what equity is.

And my definition of equity is getting the people the help that they need in order for them to be successful.

Which is an individual case.

That's what equity is.

It's not equality.

Equality, we can all start the same line, but somebody may be back.

Equity is helping that individual get to where they need to be so that they can be successful.

So with that said, we have to view it from that lens, that we do have inequities in this city.

The numbers are proving it, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, even though we make a step forward, there's always two steps taken back.

And we have to look at it from an overall perspective.

How did we get here?

And it's not only, we don't have to go back four hundred years, we can go back to the '80s when crack hit our community, specifically, and destroyed those families.

A mother or father both may be dead or in prison.

Then you have a grandmother who's trying to raise the grandchildren and then the grandchildren trying to survive will get into things that.

- [H] They shouldn't be in.

- Yeah.

They shouldn't be in.

Which is a cycle.

It's a cycle that needs to be broken.

- [Mary] And the war on crime.

- [Marvin] Yeah.

- [Mary] And drugs.

- Tim, Pastor mentioned the word sunshine.

And that brings us to the next subcommittee.

And that is environment and climate.

Now, when you hear that term, environment and climate, we're talking about rain and no, that's not what we're talking about.

- Well, it's interesting the way you've described that, H, and perhaps the most graphic example I could use to describe to the audience what we're talking about here is lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning is a huge problem in our community.

And our statistics show that it is more, considerably more of a factor in the Black communities than it is in white communities.

We can also look at statistics that the EPA provides for the impact of airborne particles and how they affect different communities.

Overwhelmingly, it has a more negative impact in those communities that are populated primarily by people of color.

- And specifically, this report found 61602, '03 and '05.

- Yes.

- Were significantly impacted in environmental justice equality.

- [Tim] Right.

- Or equity - There's, in that, there's 12 index and those areas have 11.

They're in the 90 percentile of 11 of those in Peoria.

- Let's turn to the question of housing, Mary.

That's the the fourth subcommittee we want to address.

What did you find in housing?

We talked about the median earlier.

We had the graphic about the median value of a house.

So we know that disparity but what else is happening with that subcommittee?

- If you, and I think at some point in time we all try to budget, when you look at a budget, one of the things they tell you is that your house, your living expenses should not exceed 30% of your budget.

What we found was that in the African American community and the Latin American community is that there is a 50% burden, that exceeds a 30%.

People who, 50% of their income goes toward their house living, their housing.

And then you start to talk about if I'm spending that much in terms of my living, what does that do for disposable income and the ability to participate and be involved in extracurricular activities and do other events outside of just living?

- Or maybe even hunger?

- Sure.

Yes.

- [Marvin] Or and can you also, once, another statistic is a lot of Black families have to rent.

I think it's over 50% rentals.

- Yes.

- And so that plays into it.

When you're spending that much in renting, how can you live?

It becomes a, and I don't wanna say game 'cause that limits it, it becomes a matter of survival.

How do I survive?

What do I eat next?

Where is my next meal coming from?

- And I can't learn in school if I go to school hungry.

- [Marvin] No.

- But the other is, is quality housing.

And so you're paying 50% of your income, but your house is falling, you're renting it, but it's falling down around you or you don't have the roof, the plumbing.

- Or it's filled up with lead.

- Filled with lead and heating.

- Let's turn to another subcommittee, Tim.

Information and technology.

What has the commission found so far?

- Well, the digital divide between white population and people of color, again, is amazing and horrible at the same time.

There's no question that today a student, a worker, whatever you do in life, you have to have access to the digital highway.

As it turns out in our communities and those zip codes that are reflected primarily by a Black population, '02, '03, '05, the access to a vibrant high speed internet is not near to what it is in other communities.

- Mary, one of the areas that may have, over the past year, has gotten a lot of attention is the justice system.

And that's one of the subcommittees that the commission has indicated needs to have some improvements.

What have you found there?

- Well, the data that we were able to collect, 79% of Blacks, when you talk about the Peoria County juvenile detention, 79% of the individuals that are there are Black.

And Pastor mentioned earlier, 27% of the Peoria population is Black.

But 79% of the individuals who are in juvenile detention are Black.

Arrests.

Traffic stops.

You have 61% of the stops are Black.

Again, 27% of the population.

- Once again, one of the issues is you're trying to set a baseline.

- [Mary] Yes.

- So that you know what the problem is and then you can grow from there.

- Or at least the beginning of understanding what the problem is.

- Let me stay with you, Mary, with the question of health.

That's another subcommittee.

We know that, as well as the previous subcommittee, we know justice is a problem.

We know health is a disparity.

- When you talk about infant mortality, 3.25% of Black babies die than white babies, 3.25.

When you talk about mortality, when you talk about cancer and cardiovascular disease, Black people are more, the numbers are higher with Blacks than they are with whites.

- And the last of the subcommittees, Tim, is transportation and mobility.

We've heard a lot about food deserts and you can take the bus to whatever grocery store you want to go to, but how do you get those groceries back if you're riding the bus?

- Yeah and it's not only that, of course, it's food deserts, it is ability to get to school adequately.

It's ability to get to a job in a very profound way.

And let me mention one thing, we talk about this a lot, H, and I think it's important for your viewers to understand this.

All these issues are related.

Employment's related to transportation, employment's related to your ability to have adequate healthcare.

Adequate healthcare is related to life expectancy.

And adequate healthcare is related to how well you do in school.

I mean, we could draw connections for the next half hour about all of these issues, they are all tied together.

- Mary, what's next for the Commission?

I mean, this is not, we're gonna fix this next year or even in the next five years actually.

- No, no.

We're coming up on our second year here.

So the next steps is to collect, begin to collect that qualitative data that I mentioned earlier.

So we're going to go into the community and we're going to have forums, round tables, discussions, taking this information into the community and saying, "Is this what you see to be the truth?"

And with that, "What do you see to be some of the solutions, some of the strategies to alleviate these barriers?"

And when I say go into the community, we're talking about not only the Peoria community, we are talking about the county as well.

So we will hit.

- In mentioning that, let me turn to Pastor because there needs to be a standard set by leadership.

And so the city and now the county, have established DEI officers.

How important is that to say to the community, "We're moving forward."

- And actually it is because there are other entities like Peoria Public Schools have crafted a new procurement problem.

And we're working with the park district to procure and other procurement policy.

And it's changing policies that will drive behavior.

Meaning that when you drive behavior, then you'll come through it, come look at that through an equitable lens.

- And quickly, Tim, I note that we have a Hispanic police chief, we have a Black mayor, we have a Black superintendent of schools, et cetera, role models are so important.

- Oh, absolutely.

And I think what this shows is that some progress has been made in our community, but people should not think the problem's solved.

And our statistics show that.

- And with that, we hope you'll continue the conversation at home.

We certainly will do that after the cameras are off here.

But let me say thank you to Mary Peterson, co-chair of the Joint Commission, and to Pastor Hightower of the Peoria branch of the NAACP.

- Always a pleasure.

- And to Tim Bertschy, who is the co-chair of the Commission.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us on "At Issue."

Next time we're going to turn to the issue of the Illinois River and micro wetlands.

What can you do with a small piece of property to help Mother Nature, on the next "At Issue."

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