Leon Andrews, National Director, Race, Equity and Leadership of the National League of Cities was in Indianola on Friday at the B.B. King Museum to talk to local mayors and city and state officials about racial equity in the state.
The symposium was conducted in partnership with and funded by the Mississippi Delta Health Collaborative of the Mississippi State Department of Health.
Friday’s session addressed several topics including race neutral policies, normalizing and operationalizing racial equity—which focused on developing a shared understanding and defining racial equity and using tools and data to produce results.
It was broken down into segments including one on advancing racial equity and applying strategies to effectively talk about race and an interactive segment where participants were able to demonstrate their position on a group of pre-selected questions and statements.
In a segment he called, Laying it on the Line, Andrews divided the meeting room into three sections, strongly agree, strongly disagree and neutral. The interactive nature of the activity impelled the assembled leaders to physically move to the area that clearly reflected their stance on the particular question.
Andrews told the group there were only two rules, first, there was no right or wrong answer and second, he wasn’t going to clarify any questions, their responses were to be based on how each person interpreted the question.
The NLC website touts their mission as being to strengthen and promote cities as centers of opportunity, leadership and governance and it is dedicated to helping city leaders build better communities by working in partnership with the municipal leagues of the U.S.
It lays claim to being a resource and advocate for more than 19,000 municipalities.
