0820_AUG Comstock's Magazine 0820 August | Page 30

ECONOMIC JUSTICE
deal with redlining, Jim Crow, mass
incarceration — we’re going to need
that purse to open to mitigate damage
caused throughout the years.”
Marchers in the streets, small
business owners, journalists, artists
and others have a role to play in this
fight for equality, she says. Pryor
fights on the legal front, whether
advocating for Black business owners
or working to dismantle policies that
perpetuate systems of inequality.
The organization strongly supports
Assembly Constitutional
Amendment
No. 5, the bill to
restore affirmative
action in California
and overturn Proposition
209, also known
as the California
Civil Rights Initiative,
which passed in 1996.
“These policies
keep the Black
community out of
opportunities that we
deserve,” Pryor says.
“The powers that be
and those with a sense
of entitlement will
continue to overlook
us and pretend we
don’t exist. No more of
this farce of a colorblind
mentality or the
notion of one being unqualified or ‘If
we pick one, that’s good enough.’ No,
it’s not good enough.”
Greater
emphasis
on racial health
Rob Archie was one of the lucky ones.
The co-owner of Urban Roots Brewing &
Smokehouse and Pangaea Bier Cafe was
one of the few Black business owners to
receive an emergency loan from the city.
But money doesn’t automatically erase
the racism he has experienced both in
his personal and professional life.
“When people walk through the
door, they should feel enough,” says
Archie, who grew up in Woodland, “and
that’s the problem with racism: People
are made to feel not enough.”
Archie’s solution is simple: Treat people
like human beings. He trains his staff
to make sure every person who comes
through his doors feels welcomed, like
an invited guest to a house party. But
when the coronavirus outbreak forced
him to close, his businesses went from 3
percent takeout to 100 percent. The beer
was canned, packaged and put into distribution,
which shot up 800 percent, he
says. His businesses have since reopened
“We’re making sure that Black
voices are being represented,
influencing decision-makers so our
communities can stop being left out of
certain industries. ... We’re going to need
that purse to open to mitigate damage
caused throughout the years.”
SELENA PRYOR
PRESIDENT, BLACK SMALL BUSINESS
ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA
with social distancing rules in place and
an even greater emphasis on what he
calls racial health.
“I see racism like physical health,”
Archie says. “If one day, I want to be
LeBron James, I need to start training.
In the same way, if I want to be racially
healthy, it’s my job to learn the norms of
different cultures. You have to step out
of your comfort zone if you want to be
racially healthy. You can always tell the
person with the new shoes at the gym
who ain’t been putting in no work.”
Building Healthy Communities, a 10-
year, $1 billion initiative funded by The
California Endowment, is focused on
improving 14 of California’s communities
most devastated by health inequities.
In the initiative’s list of 10 factors
that make for a healthy community,
No. 8 says, “Community health improvements
are linked to economic development.”
Kim Williams, the Sacramento
hub director for BHC, says Black-owned
businesses need to thrive for communities
to be healthy, but transformation
can’t happen without support.
“People of color have been the ones
hit the most,” she says. “When you have
COVID and civil unrest and all the
frustrations, people are tired. We’ve
been fighting and
struggling and still
can’t get the support.
When you start magnifying
everything, at
some point, it starts
to boil over.”
Strength in
numbers
One reason small businesses
suffer is because
many major cities still
put big companies on a
pedestal, according to
Keith Taylor, a community
economic development
specialist at UC
Davis’ Department of
Human Ecology. In the
past, employer subsidies
would be “stickier,”
he says, meaning that
firms would relocate for long periods of
time and employ a large labor force. “Now,
they’re very mobile, with fewer and fewer
staff,” he says. “So planners and policymakers
need to consider if those monies
are well spent on attraction and retention
or growing local enterprise.”
Taylor says current policies use investment
acts under the guise of empowering
marginalized communities when,
in reality, they merely attract corporate
giants to swoop in and take over. He
points, as an example, to the Sacramento
Kings’ Golden 1 Center, which received a
$255 million public subsidy in the deal.
“Here you have a wealthy sports
team, receiving a big chunk of public
dollars,” Taylor says. “And for what?
30 comstocksmag.com | August 2020