‘Cut-and-Paste’ Governmental Anti-Racism Group’s Overt Political Agenda

Like so many organizations and foundations and inter-governmental efforts, it has a “who could complain about that?” name:  the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, GARE for short.

And like so many similar organizations, GARE has very specific political agenda that public funds are paying to advance.

Unlike so many other groups, though, GARE is not terribly good at hiding it.

From GARE’s “communications tools” webpage, an excerpt from “Let’s Talk About Race:” 

“The objective of this report is to show that we can and should talk about race explicitly in order to move people’s hearts and minds to support progressive fiscal policies,” that “progressive messages about health care reform and subprime lending that addressed race prevailed over conservative messages that avoided it, and that “part of a collective movement to change people’s attitudes and behaviors so that we can garner support for progressive policy.”

In other words, GARE – and presumably its member cities, counties, state agencies (California’s prison and water systems are members, for example,) water districts, etc. – supports a particular political movement and attempts to convince people to follow its agenda with taxpayer money. In other words, at the end of the day your tax dollars are being used to directly coerce you to vote differently (unless, of course, joining GARE and creating a racial equity plan is simply a meaningless smokescreen meant only to shut people up.)

From GARE’s “Communications Guide” for its member government agencies regarding elections:

“Our end goal is institutionalizing sustainable practices within our government toward more equitable outcomes and engaging the public to support their priorities around racial equity But, the natural ebb and flow of elected offices and politics will create more urgency, opportunity and challenges during some periods of our work. Here are some best practices for planning for these shifts — they are all inevitable.

CHALLENGES DURING ELECTIONS

If your racial equity initiative has been an executive priority, and not fully institutionalized, introducing legislation prior to an election to formalize your jurisdiction’s commitment can be a useful and strategic step. GARE can provide templates for such legislation that you can customize to your local conditions.”

To be clear – staff forcing its elected leaders to “do something” about race (or any other issue, for that matter) by forcibly jamming the issue into an election is unethical, terrifying, and possibly actually illegal in California.

So what is GARE?

Like so many other quasi-governmental groups, it’s history is a tad convoluted.  It was formed in 2015 as a “joint project” of what is now Race Forward, and what is now the Othering and Belonging Institute at CalBerkeley.

Since its creation, GARE has grown to include more than 400 agencies across the country, with about 80 of those in California. From the City of Temecula to the County of Sonoma, the memberships dot the state.

The point of GARE is to advance equity – specifically not equality as that “doesn’t actually work” – in large part because past and current government agencies have done so much to inculcate and foster racism:

“GARE also recognizes the reality that government played a central role in the creation and maintenance of racial inequity, and did so explicitly for centuries and has done so for 50+ years implicitly via policies and practices that perpetuate inequities, even when they are color-blind or race-neutral.”

If an agency wishes to join, beyond paying its membership fees (relatively small, ranging from $1,000 to $22,500 per year) and it must sign on to the agenda of GARE:

“This commitment can be demonstrated by development and implementation of a Racial Equity Action Plan or Strategic Plan (for example – https://californiaglobe.com/articles/californias-water-now-less-racist-thanks-to-new-racial-equity-action-plan/ ), integration of racial equity into other strategic or operational plans, use of Racial Equity Tools in routine decision making, and/or adoption of legislation which describes the jurisdiction’s commitment.”

For their parts, GARE’s parent groups are also at the forefront of progressive/woke activism.  Race Forward champions other issues as gender, abortion, “femicide,” and labor matters with a goal to transform society.  Here is how that change will come about, per the website (note the “grow power”):

The Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) is also an integral part of the progressive socio-political infrastructure – either in place or being built – being used to upend existing socio-political norms.  From espousing “targeted universalism” to housing to public transportation to climate change, the OBI website is a “buzzword bingo” player’s ultimate resource.

Emphasizing the esoteric, the Institute recently sponsored a Zoom discussion of a “new theory of self,” during which the speakers decried the violence inherent in individualism, the “presumptuousness of citizenry,” the “impossibility of the individual” and how the planet, and/or its “human machine ecological relations,”  is becoming conscious, and that people should not be seen as individuals but as “ongoing processes.”  

(Note – Here’s the presentation and I apologize if my previous sentence was a tad confusing; if you watch it for any length of time you will forgive me:  https://belonging.berkeley.edu/new-theory-self .  Or you could just watch this scene from “Blazing Saddles; it’s pretty much the same thing:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNC3OciAF3w )

Returning to GARE itself and its communications guide for its member jurisdictions one finds what could only be described as an aggressive “anti-racist” sales pitch.  

The guide – read it in PDF format below – suggests local governments use an “Affirm, Counter, Transform (ACT)” communications strategy to change residents’ political opinions.  Here’s an example of ACT at work:

MYTH: Racism will end when individual people stop being racist. 

FACT: Structural racism drives inequities in our communities despite the good intentions of individual people. We can have entire organizations made up of well-intentioned people who are operating within an institution and system that is perpetuating racial inequities. We must dismantle structural racism to achieve equitable outcomes. 

SAMPLE A.C.T. RESPONSE: 

Affirm: The personal is political, and identifying our own actions and inactions as individuals is critically important in racial equity work. 

Counter: While individual acts of racism are destructive, fixing them will never be enough — structural change drives individual change much more quickly than the other way around. 

Transform: As individuals, we all need to step up and be accountable for our own roles in ongoing issues of race. But our effort will yield the best results if we focus our interventions on institutional and structural change.

The guide encourages the creation of “shared stories” and community commonalities, disparages the concept of a “meritocracy,” notes that jurisdictions should get the press on board, advises that if a city cannot “convert skeptics into allies” it could at least “dissuade active resisters,” helpfully adding – very disturbingly – that an agency “doesn’t need everyone” to agree to move a given policy and that “30 percent” public support is more than enough to reach a goal.

A key part of the guide is the idea of the “A-Ha!” moment, when a member of the public finally becomes aware that “Government created and continues to perpetuate racial inequity. We must transform government to advance racial equity.”  

Once that plateau is reached, compliance follows.

ACT itself is age-old sales technique and the entire guide is interchangeable from pitch/message “decks” that every company creates to sell its product, from toothpaste to semi-conductors.  

Except in this case, GARE is selling something very different and doing it with public money.

And that’s not being very equal at all.

Efforts were made to reach out to a few in-state members and GARE for comment – none were successful save for the city of Temecula which stated that while it “has access to networking, education, and resource sharing opportunities” of GARE it has not “has not implemented any specific GARE materials.”  We will update the item if/when responses are forthcoming.