Statement from the board of directors of the Cherokee Street Community Improvement District

Black lives matter. Racism and white supremacy have no place on Cherokee Street. 
While obvious to some, these statements bear repeating. 

As an institution of power in our neighborhood, the Board of the Cherokee Street Community Improvement District commits to using our resources and our voice to better support the movement for black lives. As job number one, we are taking a step back to evaluate whether our actions are in line with our values of addressing social inequity & fighting systemic oppression. What we’ve found is that, on multiple occasions, our actions have not aligned with these values.

For example, in our desire to reduce crime, we pursued the policy used by most commercial districts of adding more police officers to the street through the use of secondary patrols - despite the fact that ‘more officers’ does not equate to ‘more safety’ for many in our neighborhood. 

We commit to doing things differently.

As step one, the Cherokee Street CID will not be moving forward with secondary police patrols, and will dedicate the $24,000 that was set aside in our budget for those patrols instead to implement a public safety vision that is driven by the desires and ideas of our community. We will be dedicating our upcoming CID public meeting (held June 18th at 5:30 PM via Zoom) to beginning to create that vision. We view this public meeting as a starting point; meaningful and sustained engagement of black-led organizations and of our community members will be integral to crafting & implementing this vision going forward.

This is one step we are taking towards dismantling systemic racism in our own community, and not the last. We know we have more to do, and look forward to taking direction for real action from our community.