WSLB Statement on Black Lives Matter

Our organization is entrusted with the mission of promoting equity and moral leadership in Washington state. We cannot fulfill that mission without supporting, in word and in action, the Black Lives Matter movement.

That means we are focused first and foremost on practical change – what we can do best from where we are. 

Our core function is to administer a number of equity-focused youth leadership programs. Our students are passionate, talented, and more than ready to help us take up the cause.  

Here is what we commit to: 

We are supporting and guiding our student leaders’ efforts in the Legislative Youth Advisory Council to develop an official youth legislative agenda for Washington State focused on ending discriminatory school discipline policies, promoting anti-racist school curricula, and investing resources in counseling rather than police presence in schools. We are helping them build a statewide youth committee that will place them in positions of power as schools develop policies aimed at dismantling racist systems. And as an organization, we are listening to them, as they know better than any adult what it is like to grow up in a racist society right now, yet are eager to enact change for the next generation.

Going forward, our programming will continue to address equity issues in our state, but will focus more explicitly on racial systems in the United States and on Black history. Next year, we plan to take students working to promote social justice on a Civil Rights tour of the South to expose them to an educational experience that we hope will inform and inspire them. For our other programs, we will redouble our efforts to build cultural competence and historical context into our curricula, particularly those programs like the Washington World Fellows that take students overseas to engage with other cultures. It also means that the values of equity, inclusion, and diversity will continue to inform our work from recruitment of new student cohorts, to building relationships with other grassroots organizations focused on racial equity, to the leadership and governance of the Board itself.

In addition to our actions however, words matter too. We unequivocally state our support of the Black Lives Matter movement and its goals to dismantle our system of white supremacy, reform our criminal justice system, and transform policing practices in this country.  

Finally, we express our love for and commitment to the Black community. That means we recognize the enormous pain of four centuries of an oppressive system that changes forms but remains constant, and we recognize the significance of the present moment as our nation once again attempts to confront the sins of the past and present through the lens of the deeply traumatic murders of innocent Black people. We will channel that love into energy as we use our platform to recognize the contributions and successes of Black community members in Washington state, and, most importantly as we care for our students and empower them so that they can become the leaders the future needs. As Meiqi Liang, one of our Legislative Advisory Council students put it so well:

“Change is the mantle that the next generation is ready to carry, because we see where the world could be. Every decision from this point forward has be to focused on redressing the past, so we can create a community that is founded on equity.”

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