Why Waters Meet Supports Safe and Healthy Spokane
Dear Community Partners,
On June 11, I stood alongside community partners, business leaders, elected officials, and law enforcement to present the final recommendations of the Safe and Healthy Spokane Task Force. These recommendations are the result of months of community meetings, discussions, workshops, and plenty of disagreement and compromise. I believe they are an important first step to creating the type of holistic services and facilities we need to improve the safety and health of the Greater Spokane region.
Since we first supported convening this task force, Waters Meet has invested our money and energy into seeing this project through. This investment was driven by our belief that we need more funding to improve the infrastructure and services needed to create a safer and healthier community, and that Waters Meet can use our organizational privilege to support and uplift the voices of the communities we serve.
One of the conditions for our support of this process has been that people with lived experience in the justice system, and from Black and Brown communities disproportionately impacted by the justice system, have a meaningful say in this process. I believe, and I think our community partners will agree, that their voices have shaped the recommendations we are now sending to elected officials.
I have seen first hand the power of our partners in these rooms. I’ve seen how Angel Tomeo Sam and Stanley Harewood, both members of the Justice Not Jails Leadership Committee, have consistently stood up to share their lived experience of what doesn’t work in our carceral system. I have also heard Ana Trusty of Mujeres in Action, Joe Jermal, a community member, Silas Eroaldi of Spectrum Center, Toni Lodge of The Native Project, and Virla Spencer of The Way to Justice remind the task force of the specific people and communities who are most disproportionately impacted by the ways our systems don’t work for now: our Black, Immigrant, Latine, Native and Pasifika communities.
I want to express my deep gratitude for their leadership and courage in these spaces and their willingness to show up even when their dignity and experience are not always honored by everyone in the room.
The beauty and lasting power of this process is not that we’ve found specific solutions. Instead, it’s that we’ve created a space of authentic engagement, trust, and relationships where we can continue to come together and seek better outcomes for our community. It is also that we have reinforced the ways in which public processes that affect all of us are more effective when we invite leaders who have lived experience in the issues we are working on — building a process that honors “nothing about us without us” is power in action.
Now, we look to our elected leaders to run with this spirit of collaboration and engagement to continue to move this process forward. Our community deserves investments that create the kind of integrated systems necessary to not simply punish or jail people, but to give them the resources and support they need to move forward with their lives — a prospect that is better for all of us.
As we move from community-based processes to political realities, it’s hard to know how the spirit of this work will carry through. What I do know, is we will remain committed to the principles that led us to support this work in the first place. That our community is worthy of and needs deep investments in more effective systems of care. That the voices of communities who are disproportionately impacted by the justice system must be centered and respected as we collaborate for a better future. And, that when we come together across political and ideological divides we can create solutions that uplift our entire community.
Moving Forward Together,
Zeke Smith
Zeke Smith is the President of Waters Meet.
If you’re interested in learning more about our approach to health equity, please check out our 10-Year Strategic Direction.