Have Lansing and East Lansing's new diversity chairs yielded change?

More than a year into new jobs as advocates for diversity in their cities, Guadalupe Ayala and Elaine Hardy have their work cut out for them.

Ayala and Hardy are the diversity, equity and inclusion officers for Lansing and East Lansing respectively. East Lansing appointed Hardy in June 2020, and Ayala started in Lansing in November 2020, part of a wave of DEI positions created in response to national calls for racial justice. Hardy in particular began her job just as protests erupted over the killing of George Floyd in June 2020.

Even before those protests, local governments in Lansing and East Lansing had come under fire for racial dynamics in their cities. East Lansing added diversity to its strategic plan as early as December 2019, the same month as the first of two incidents in which an ELPD officer was eventually accused of excessive force.

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"The challenge for me this year, really bar-none, has been trying to navigate building employee relationships in this pandemic," Hardy said. "Getting people from across the huge organization who don't necessarily work together all the time to come together in these learning communities and build community."

In Lansing, city government has faced criticism for its handling of discrimination at City Hall — especially after nine Black staffers sued the city in August 2020. Lansing's work surrounding those allegations was done largely behind closed doors in 2021, culminating with in Mayor Andy Schor's Racial Justice and Equity Alliance report in August, a year after the lawsuit was filed.

More: Lansing makes little visible progress in 2021 on diversity, racial justice goals

"It did take a lot of people from the community to put together that report and release it," Ayala said. "It's not the launch that we did in August, but it was really the work that began basically then in taking into account everything that the committees recommended and the goals that they set forth."

Here's how Hardy and Ayaya reflect on their work in 2021 — and what they're planning for this year.

East Lansing: Elaine Hardy, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

In the time since complaints of excessive force against ELPD, East Lansing has passed several reform-minded ordinances. Those include one to change how and when police initiate traffic stops, one to change disorderly conduct laws disproportionately affecting women and one that aims to tamp down on 911 calls based on a person's race or nationality.

Outside of policing, Hardy co-authored city resolutions recognizing Juneteenth, Indigenous People's Day, Hispanic Heritage Month and Pride Month.

She also developed a request for proposal to facilitate conversations on cultural education among city staff.

"We are tackling within the city of East Lansing not just a cursory level of work towards equity, but we're really doing a deep dive," Hardy said. "We're asking staff to commit four hours of their workday a month to examine our American cultures, seeing how the effects of all the 'isms' — racism, sexism — played out in our culture."

She added, "I think for for me, the most significant accomplishment is really harkening back to our original commitment as a city organization to become anti-racist. That is still the forefront of our mission right there."

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Most notably, East Lansing established a permanent citizen police oversight commission after more than a year of workshopping how the body would function. Eleven citizens were sworn in in November.

They've since reviewed monthly use of force reports provided by ELPD and held two meetings in November and December 2021. January's meetings were canceled due to COVID-19.

Hardy hopes to see her efforts at City Hall trickle out into the city and become second nature this year.

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Lansing: Guadalupe Ayala, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer

In 2021, Lansing residents questioned the pace and efficacy of Mayor Andy Schor's Racial Justice and Equity Alliance, which was created in 2020 to promote equity in the city.

"It's not something that can be done overnight and is something we're taking slowly," Ayala said of the 30-person alliance, which she sat on alongside business people, activists, faith leaders and other local officials.

Ayala's focus this year is on establishing a permanent DEI board in the city. It could take time to set up, she said, as it rests on City Council to adopt an ordinance to create it.

Ayala said the MRJEA has been working toward a "structure for the implementation of the different recommended actions" that the group made in August. Some of those recommendations were internal; others were community-facing, including a diversity dashboard with demographic info about city employees that launched earlier this month.

MRJEA plans: Lansing makes little visible progress in 2021 on diversity, racial justice goals

Scott Bean, communications director for the city, added that the dashboard is a work in progress, since leadership is narrowing down which demographic info can and cannot be quantified. The dashboard currently excludes city leadership, but will soon have demographic makeup of department directors — seven white staffers, three Black and one of Hispanic/Latino ancestry, Bean said. Schor's leadership team consists of two white people, two Black people and one Hispanic/Latino person.

"This kind of goes back to what (Ayala) talked about when we announced the dashboard, is that it's going to ever be evolving and changing because data changes," Bean said.

Public dashboard: Key takeaways from Lansing's new diversity dashboard

Meanwhile, some city projects have faced questions concerning equity, including an ice rink set up at City Hall in 2020. The project came under fire for not offering skate rentals, limiting its use only to those who owned skates. This year the rink returned with free rentals to the public.

Ayala said the city has developed a racial equity tool to restructure how it approaches projects, policies, programming and the municipal budget. Lansing based its own tool on one designed by a national group, the Government Alliance on Race and Equity.

"At the end of using this racial equity tool, our directors are basically given an outline on how to make an equitable decision where everybody is at the top or everybody is given all the resources that they really need," she said.

Other priorities for Ayala this year are creating a citizen police oversight board like East Lansing's and establishing safe spaces where minority employees can discuss workplace and other issues confidentially.

"There's processes that need to be done, that maybe not a lot of people are aware of," Ayala said.

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Contact reporter Krystal Nurse at (517) 267-1344 or knurse@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @KrystalRNurse.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Have Lansing and East Lansing's new diversity chairs yielded change?