Reflections from Bellevue’s Centering Communities of Color former Vice Chair.
The experiences I share are from my perspective alone, I do not speak for other members who have been or who are currently involved with CCC.
In 2022, I was in a program called Bellevue Essentials, a 10 week civic engagement program hosted by the city of Bellevue. The goal was to unveil the inner workings of the city and hopefully engage community members beyond the program through various volunteer opportunities, committees and commissions.
Through Bellevue Essentials, I was introduced to the Diversity Advantage Team (DAT), who was at the time recruiting new members for the Centering Communities of Color initiative (CCC). I became a member in 2023, membership included a $50 stipend per meeting attended. I was paid a stipend of $50 for the following dates: 02/28/23, 03/14/23, 04/27/23, 05/09/23, 06/22/23, 07/11/23, 08/24/23 , 09/12/23, 09/28/23, 10/26/23, 11/14/23, 11/16/23 and 12/12/23.
When I joined Centering Communities of Color (CCC) I was told the initiative was a collaboration between CCC members acting as a bridge for the community to connect and work with the city of Bellevue, to build racial equity, inclusion and trust; and to make policy recommendations to city council to improve racial and ethnic equality for communities of color in Bellevue.
Below is a short, but not comprehensive timeline of my experiences with CCC:
Dialogues
During the summer of 2023, under the guidance and training of CCC’s consultant Joshua Barr, we as a group and the DAT, planned and hosted 7 community dialogues throughout the city of Bellevue. I was nominated and voted into the position of Vice Chair by CCC and DAT.
I completed qualitative analysis of the information gathered from the dialogues and organized them into high level themes. Monik M. (former CCC Chair) and I met with the DAT and Joshua Barr to review the qualitative analysis for an informal feasibility review.
Open House
Early fall of 2023, Monik M., myself, Dr. Marcus Johnson (DAT staff member) and Joshua Barr, planned and coordinated the details for CCC’s Open House, location, flow of event, layout and goals, and presented it back to CCC for final approval and review. The goal was to have community members vote on their top priorities, and for CCC to transform those priorities into recommendations to present to Bellevue's City Council.
I completed 8 illustrations for the open house within a week's time, unpaid, due to the artist declining to take on the job. The artist cited a low budget, which was $300 and the unreasonable timeline for completion, which was 1-2 weeks.
In November of 2023 CCC members, Monik M.and I, Dr. Johnson and Joshua Barr along with DAT, various volunteers and community leaders, hosted CCC’s Open House, presenting the conversations, themes and hopes that were recurrent during the community dialogues that the community voted on.
Post Open House Review
In December 2023, the DAT counted the votes with no CCC members present. DAT informed CCC members of the result. CCC and DAT narrowed the results down to 3-4 priorities to base our recommendations on for the City Council presentation.
Council Presentation Prep and CCC Strategic Planning
Through January 2024 up until March 2024, outside of the regular CCC meeting dates, Monik M. and I, along with Dr. Johnson, met with several city departments to do a deeper feasibility study.
In February 2024, outside of the regular CCC meeting dates, I had several CCC leadership, strategic planning and policy recommendation meetings with Monik Martinez and DAT up until April of 2024.
CCC Pause & Communication Break Down
Between February 2024 and April 2024, CCC leadership and the DAT became more misaligned on goals and expectations for CCC’s council presentation, policy recommendations and strategic planning for CCC. DAT heavily recommended being aligned with council priorities, opposite of CCC’s desires to propose new recommendations that were aligned with the themes reported by the community.
In April 2024, Monik M. and I had a meeting with Dr. Linda Whitehead (Diversity Advantage Team department head) and Dr. Johnson. We were informed that CCC will not be presenting recommendations to city council and that CCC’s top priority was to assist with updating the Diversity Advantage plan 2.0. It was decided by Dr. Whitehead to pause meetings until all CCC members were interviewed based on the need to assess membership interest.
Meetings were paused from mid April 2024 up until mid September 2024.
During this pause, CCC leadership attempted to escalate concerns to appropriate parties, including Human Resources and the City Manager office while keeping CCC members informed of progress.
CCC Restart
Early September 2024, DAT planned and launched a celebration of CCC’s work. I did not attend this celebration.
Mid September 2024, within the week of CCC meetings resuming, several members including CCC’s chair, had their membership dismissed due to their term being completed. I ran the meeting as interim chair, to my surprise and I didn't know who was a member and who was not. This meeting had unusual attendance of city staff and the city manager, who had not regularly attended the meetings previously. Overall the meeting was disorganized and chaotic.
I had a follow up meeting with the city manager, inquiring how I can move forward in my position despite my poor experiences, concerns and unanswered questions from DAT. The City Manager proposed a change in staff as a resolution. While beneficial, that did not address the need for reconciliation and acknowledgement of what went wrong between CCC and DAT. My hope was to prevent similar issues in the future for other community members who want to be a part of CCC.
In November 2024, I ultimately decided to step down as Vice Chair of CCC and did not participate in any meetings for the remainder of the year.
Council Presentation & CCC rebuilding
January 2025, I was called by Dr. Johnson, who asked if I would be joining CCC’s meeting to discuss presenting an overview on the community dialogues to City Council. Though I had not participated in any meetings since resigning, Dr. Johnson said he was unclear of my membership and asked if I was interested in attending the meeting. I did on the bias that was what was originally promised upon joining CCC originally and decided to help with the presentation.
January 2025 to February 2025, I assisted with the planning of this council presentation. The remaining active members did not have the experience of being a part of the planning, running and post review process for the community dialogues and open house that I had.
In February 2025, I joined two CCC members, Dr. Marcus and Dr. Whithead, to present an ”Overview of Centering Communities of Color Community Dialogue Results and Updates to the Diversity Advantage Plan.”
During this time, they were interviewing new members to join CCC and I was not asked to participate.
Resignation
June 2025, I resign with more clarity and totality from CCC.
My reflections:
During my time with CCC, I experienced goals shifting, roles and expectations being unclear, a lack of clear and effective communication, and unequal workloads. As a result, collaborating with city staff as a CCC member was challenging and led to poor experiences and burn out. My experience led to me feeling overworked, under compensated, unheard, used, and misled. I was also left with a physical injury needing rehabilitation and therapy as well. The labor I provided for CCC’s initiative went above and beyond the compensation that was provided.
Despite the personal negative impacts and experience, I want CCC to succeed because its foundation was built on the stories and vision from the community. CCC has the potential to create meaningful action and change, as seen from its influence on the Diversity Advantage Plan 2.0 update. CCC has touched many corners of the community as well as various Bellevue city departments. CCC has my support to continue the work that has been started.
However, I don't want my experiences to be repeated with any other community member of color working with the city in any capacity. My contributions and sacrifices during my time with CCC were a labor of love and a commitment to my community for the improvement of equity within the city of Bellevue.
Collaboration between the city of Bellevue and community members of color needs to occur from an equitable, safe and accountable setting for all.
Changes need to be made. Lessons need to be learned. Voices need to be heard.
