After years of development, the Spokane city government has launched its own Office of Civil Rights, Equity and Inclusion (OCREI) and the person leading it, Jerrall Haynes, was a key player in its formation.
The office will build collaborative relations with marginalized communities within the city, enforce Spokane’s Human Rights Code, build institutional practices that advance racial justice and provide access to resources for citizens in cases of civil rights violations, among other things.
“I believe that when it comes to civil rights and civil rights work and advocacy and justice — that is what it means for every person who resides in the United States of America to truly feel free,” Haynes said. “Until we can [all] live out the promises of what it means to be an American, I think civil rights work is what is going to get us there.”
How the office will work
The OCREI will work in conjunction with the Spokane Human Rights Commission (SHRC), said Anwar Peace, who serves as the chair of that commission. While the SHRC is a volunteer body, the OCREI is a city office with paid staff, overseen by Haynes.
During his first months as a member of the commission, Peace said that Spokane NAACP President Kurtis Robinson showed the commission a presentation with years worth of civil rights complaints filed for the NAACP.
“I remember the reaction of the whole task force and it was like, ‘holy smokes,’” Peace said.
And while the push to create an actual office within the city was sparked by a string of racist and homophobic hate incidents in 2019, the office will also respond to citizen complaints around other basic civil rights concerns like housing access.
“Let’s say you are a tenant or a potential tenant, and you believe that the landlord hiked up prices for you in comparison to someone else just to try to not allow you to rent out their facility,” Haynes said as an example of where the OCREI could step in. “Or that you feel like you’ve been unlawfully evicted with no other reasons.”
And while the new office will field complaints, it is also tasked with improving city systems to ensure equity and inclusion across government departments.
The OCREI’s work will also include:
- Working with the Police Ombudsman’s office on Title VI cases — a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that holds that publicly funded institutions cannot discriminate on the basis of race
- Reporting on other civil rights violations, including in equal opportunity employment and housing discrimination
- Helping hold local institutions and businesses accountable to the Spokane Civil Rights Code
- Offering avenues for litigation and assistance in cases where civil rights violations fall out of their jurisdiction
- Hosting educational forums and programs to help local business owners learn how to better serve employees and customers
- Creating avenues for less mobile community members to get better accessibility in public spaces — ranging from sidewalks to workspaces
In the event that the OCREI cannot directly assist community members, they will be directed to the proper resources. In the case of the right to a fair trial, the office can connect individuals to the State Attorney’s Office. For housing violations, they will be put in contact with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, Haynes said.
“My hope is that [the OCREI] directs the work of the internal workings of the city to bring the community closer and closer together and to help advise the various departments and city council offices on how we can be more equitable and inclusive when it comes to policy development,” Haynes said.
A long road to get here
The story of the OCREI doesn’t start with Haynes. His recent hiring is the result of years of work and comes after a lengthy period where the office was supposed to be running but went unstaffed.
In the fall of 2019, a surge of hate and bias incidents — including a series of racist fliers posted outside of Morning Star Baptist Church by neo-Nazis — sent social justice organizations in the greater Spokane area into action.
“At that time, we were just [dealing with] floods and floods of cries for advocacy and civil rights issues over and over and over again,” Robinson said. Facing this torrent of hate, the Spokane NAACP and community partners called on the city to do more to protect targeted communities, he said.
Much of the work to oppose instances of hate had fallen to community organizations like NAACP and PJALS, which rely heavily on volunteers. “The message was: ‘You all in the system need to start taking responsibility instead of putting it on the backs of a bunch of volunteers,’” he said.
Community activists then met with the Spokane Human Rights Commission and a proposed task force was set into motion during December of that year, incorporating more than 10 community members representing various groups around the area — including Gonzaga University, the NAACP and SCAR.
In 2020, the task force collaborated with the Gonzaga Institute for Hate Studies to develop the Government Local Offices dedicated to Rights, Inclusion and Equity (GLORIE) Benchmark Study. That study collected information from similar-sized cities to Spokane as well as other cities in the Pacific Northwest, including Tacoma and Portland, Oregon.
The report included summaries of each city’s most recent budgets and per capita investments in their respective offices of civil rights. The study led the task force to propose a model for Spokane’s office based on the Office of Human and Civil Rights in Des Moines, Iowa.
Originally working with the city in 2020 as the community court coordinator, Haynes was brought on in October 2021 as the interim Civil Rights Coordinator while the OCREI was still being developed. He fielded civil rights violations from community members and helped direct them to federal and state resources while developing the OCREI and building out his future job. He did this with no support staff or control over his budget until his eventual hire earlier this year, despite the city council budgeting for the OCREI every year since late 2021.
After a year of research, the task force collaborated with Greater Spokane Progress to formally put together a proposal for the Human Rights Commission and they passed a resolution to establish a city-funded office of civil rights in November 2021. A month later, the City Council passed an ordinance to establish a city-funded office of civil rights — including a director and two other staff members.
Funding was in place for nearly two years, though Haynes wasn’t hired until June this year. Despite the delay, Haynes has big goals for the OCREI, including expanding its capacity by hiring at least two more staff members to the team.
“I am personally interested in our office sitting down and going through the policies and procedures of all the other departments in the city to make sure that we can either create new policies or change policies that currently exist to be more equitable and inclusive,” Haynes said.
To get involved, Robinson suggests community members pay attention to the opportunities the office gives to participate in forums and other events. Haynes also recommends individuals get involved in their neighborhood councils.
