Together, we must spark fires and tend hearths.

Shakirah Simley | Photography: Maria del Rio

Working as the inaugural director of San Francisco’s Office of Racial Equity, I’ve reflected on my purpose — what I have done and what I still intend to do. I think of my path as one of fire. Fire that burns uncontained across a forest is kindled by a spark, and yet fire can also be held within a hearth in our homes. Sometimes our calling is to be the spark, and sometimes our calling is to be the hearth.

It is with immense gratitude that I announce that in July, I will transition from the Human Rights Commission to serving as the Executive Director of the Booker T. Washington Community Services Center. It has been a privilege to serve under the direction of Dr. Sheryl Evans Davis and Mayor London Breed. It is an honor to be sustained by powerful Black femme leadership to advocate for racial equity, and enact systemic change via new programs and policies within the City’s workforce and to the greater public.

This moment is bittersweet for me because I am so proud of what the Office of Racial Equity has accomplished. When a forest fire burns, it removes debris and underbrush, opening the forest floor up to sunlight, and nourishing the soil for more trees to grow. At the ORE, we’ve cultivated a regenerative and solid foundation for this work to continue. Since the ORE was created in 2018, we have:

• Convened over 200 Racial Equity Leaders from every department in the City, providing technical assistance and holding monthly discussions and trainings to empower our workforce to take action;
• Created the first San Francisco Citywide Racial Equity Framework;
• Led 52 City Departments in the successful completion of their Racial Equity Plans, focused on internal workforce equity, and developed an evaluation rubric to support effective ongoing implementation and transformation;
• Created racial equity principles for the Mayor’s Budget Office to advance equity and meaningful community-based support in the citywide budget process;
• Deployed as the first Equity Team at the City’s COVID-19 Command Center to advocate for greater equity in testing, social services, healthcare, PPE provision, and vaccine access for people of color and at-risk communities during the COVID-19 pandemic;
• Released a COVID-19 Response and Recovery Racial Equity Toolkit;
• Co-authored landmark reports, including the Annual Workforce Equity Report and Implementation Plan for Racial & Gender Equity Reporting in City Contracting;
• Grown the ORE team to include new staff and built out our operational infrastructure;
• Developed a legislative tool and provided analysis on the racial equity impact of proposed ordinances at the SF Board of Supervisors in key policy areas;
• Consulted for multiple City Departments with racial equity analysis to inform capital plans, strategic planning and major initiatives, such as the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force;
• Supported major initiatives for the SFHRC, including the Dream Keeper Initiative, the $120 million reinvestment into San Francisco’s African American communities, and launched Stand Together SF, a cross-cultural collaborative of Black and AAPI leaders working against hate and discrimination;
• Developed ‘Deliver the Vote’, a citywide initiative with the Shanti Project, to help homebound and marginalized residents cast their ballots in the 2020 November General Election;
• Expanded the conversation around racism and discrimination within departments to lift up worker voice and encourage our workforce to speak up about their experience.

Over the next year, the ORE team will boldly continue to fulfill its legislative mandate:

• Working with community in developing Phase 2/External Citywide Racial Equity Action Framework;
• Establish a curriculum for Citywide Racial Equity Trainings with newly allocated funding
• Create a Racial Equity Index and issue a report card on how San Francisco as a whole is faring across indicators by race, including housing, income/wealth, transit, health, policing/ justice system, and other factors;
• Establish a Citywide Racial Equity Consultant Pool to ensure racial equity consultants are well-qualified and increase contracting efficiency;
• Finalize a Citywide Budget Equity Analysis Tool;
• Ensure every City Department reports on their progress in implementing their Racial Equity Plans and is accountable to community;
• Create a JEDI Community Advisory Council (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion);
• Provide a Workforce Equity Roadmap in partnership with the Department of Human Resources, Civil Service Commission and Labor partners.

For many years now, and in my work for the City, I have continuously felt called to be a spark, to burn a path for new growth in a thick, tangled forest. I have fought for our historically marginalized and low-income neighborhoods, especially our communities of color, such as working with Bayview residents to realize the long-held promise of the new Southeast Community Center. As a District 5 legislative aide, I was Supervisor Vallie Brown’s lead for the City Budget process, successfully advocating for increased funds for affordable housing production, a local Working Families Earned Income Tax Credit, and universal access to legal aid for low-income tenants. I am grateful to have assisted Supervisor Brown in passing over 30 pieces of legislation, including San Francisco’s first Safe Parking Program for the vehicularly homeless, a ban on contracting with and restricting City-funded travel to States that pass abortion bans, and co-authoring the mandate for the City’s first Office of Racial Equity.

I’ve been proud to catalyze difficult, critical work and conversations. To build a longer table with a few more seats. To advocate within a system that is inequitable. To scale this ladder of broken and missing rungs, yet pulling up more folks alongside me.

This is now a time for me to tend the hearth. Moving forward, I will return to my organizing roots to work alongside our beloved community as the Executive Director of the Booker T. Washington Community Services Center. The Center has welcomed generations of San Francisco families, serving as a driving force for educational, cultural, and social activities for the Black community in the Western Addition for over 100 years. This is an incredible — and irresistible — opportunity to work with our families, youth, elders, Center staff and Board to ensure the next century for Booker T is just as dynamic, and I am so thrilled to now work with the community I have called home for 13 years.

To my City colleagues

I know this work is incredibly tough and often painful. Unapologetically leading with equity means getting at the root to dismantle institutions and systems steeped in racism, xenophobia, sexism, anti-Blackness, and Native invisibility. This is not work for the faint-hearted.

I invite you to claim the courage and imagination necessary to enact tangible and material change. I invite you to declare, “Not on my watch.” We need everyone everywhere — because we all have positional power to enact change. Supremacist status quo thrives on inertia, the billion reasons why you can’t do something, why something can’t happen. An archaic rule, an apathetic worker, an excruciatingly slow process. Start where you can do something, versus where you can’t.

Conversations and representation alone cannot fix systemic racism — commitment can. Reject tokenism and performative acts of equity. Commit to being active agents in correcting the wrongs long perpetuated within City government. When guided by a lens of racial and social justice, government is a force for the public good and is seamless for the people it is meant to serve.

I have held this work with an open heart, thick skin, and strong backbone. I’ve learned that a little grace and kindness go a long way. I invite you all to hold this work with deep empathy and radical love as you would towards someone who’s grieving, someone who’s in pain, and someone who’s fighting to get free. Take collective responsibility to reimagine, create, and improve a public sector system where success is not predicted by identity or zip code.

Last but not least, I’m grateful for the Black women and women of color who have held me, guided me and set me straight when needed. The air to my fire. I want to especially thank Director Davis for her incredible grace, teachings and mentorship. Thank you to my brilliant colleagues: Brittni (HRC Chief of Staff), ORE team members Sami, Jessica, and Sarah, and my entire HRC family. I’m indebted to Vallie Brown for her leadership and taking me under her wing, and Sandra Lee Fewer and Chelsea Boilard for their support. Thank you to Mayor Breed for believing in me. Finally, I want to thank my many sisters and brothers in the struggle, for the late night calls, sound guidance, and healing walks. No woman is an island in this work — I am honored to light the path alongside you.

Keep the flame alive,

Shakirah