Forward Through Ferguson co-chair Rebeccah Bennett is proud of the work that the 16-member Ferguson Commission conducted, in collaboration with hundreds of citizen volunteers, to produce the 203-page report that digs into some of the root causes of the unrest following the August 9, 2014, shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Today, Bennett describes the level of progress made toward the report’s recommendations as “a mixed bag.” Many of its goals have yet to be met, she notes, in part because of resistance from the Missouri General Assembly. Where Bennett has seen progress is in the level of energy shown by individuals and institutions in addressing their roles in the region’s structural inequalities “and how what they do contributes to or helps to diminish the existing disparities—in this case racial disparities,” says Bennett, founder and principal of Emerging Wisdom, which the Ferguson Commission hired to lead public engagement.
The heart of the Ferguson Commission’s report is a list of 188 “calls to action,” such as municipal court reform, Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (a non-starter in the GOP-controlled legislature), and the merger of many of the county’s nearly 60 municipal police departments (another non-starter after the demise of Better Together’s recent merger efforts). Of those 188 calls to action, 47 are “signature priorities,” Bennett says.
“In the last five years, we have probably seen five of those signature priorities really acted upon and implemented with some measure of rigor and effectiveness,” says Bennett, ticking off a list that includes updates on police use-of-force statutes, increased police training hours, and the delivery of financial services through an empowerment site.
“So those are things that are concrete that we have seen come out of this work,” she says, “but you can do the math, right? Five out of 47 says there is a whole lot that we need to be doing and can do and have not yet done.”
Bennett believes that the region has spent the past five years building the “muscles” to advance needed systemic and institutional change. “Think about muscles as sort of infrastructure and posture toward change,” she says. “And that matters if we don’t have the strength and stamina necessary to do the work over the long haul.”
For those seeking changes, she believes, it’s important to take a long-term perspective: “Because the long view is what we are seeking to change,” she says.
