Our Commitment to You, Chattanooga:

This is not an equity statement, it is a commitment to action. 

green|spaces’ staff and board of directors work to advance the sustainability of living, working, and building in Chattanooga. When we use "sustainability", people often immediately assume we're talking about the environment. But in reality, we advocate for holistic sustainability which includes environmental, economic, and social sustainability, also known as the triple bottom line.

Every decision we make impacts people, the planet, and profit. The global COVID-19 pandemic and the recent murders of black men and women added to the thousands that have been murdered in the past, continues to show patterns of decisions that have produced negative impacts within our communities and country. We need to measure what matters and make decisions accordingly. Black lives are human lives and should be treated as such. It is the most basic tenet of humanity.

We stand with the protestors in Chattanooga and around the country that are demanding meaningful change from the institutions in our communities to address the systemic racism that leads to such disparate outcomes in criminal justice, health, economic opportunity, education, housing, and environment, which then have ripple effects through every aspect of daily life. We advocate for families, businesses, organizations, and governments to make meaningful, effective changes in decisions and policies to improve these outcomes. We have found that Kotter's 8 Step process for leading change to be a successful guide for managing all sorts of culture changes and we feel it is appropriate for this moment as well. 

Step 1: Create a sense of urgency. Check. 

Step 2: Build a powerful, guiding coalition. green|spaces has joined C.A.L.E.B. which has shown with the community bail fund that a wide range of diverse and powerful groups can come together around important issues on a wide range of topics and create real, meaningful change. 

Step 3: Form a Strategic Vision and Initiatives. We believe this is the next step. We have to be able to visualize an anti-racist Chattanooga that provides equitable access to power and resources. As Mark Charles told us in 2017, we cannot share this vision until we publicly reconcile our past as a nation and as a community. 

Step 4: Enlist a volunteer army. green|spaces will work with our members, supporters, and donors to do the work that needs to be done based on the vision identified in Step 3. 

Step 5: Enable action by removing barriers. We have to identify and deconstruct the policies that reinforce systemic racism in everything from housing and education to criminal justice and health. 

Step 6: Generate short term wins. We believe that the city adopting the 8 Can't Wait policies from Campaign Zero are a step in the right direction. We would like to see more progress like this from a wider range of institutions. 

Step 7: Sustain acceleration. This will likely be our biggest stumbling block. It is easy for organizations to focus on this now, but maintaining that focus while we continue our programming will be difficult. However, we are committed and we believe others are too. 

Step 8: Institute change. It took 400 years to build the systems of racism in our country, and those systems will not change fundamentally overnight. green|spaces as an organization is committed to ensuring that equity and social sustainability are a core feature of everything we do to advance the triple bottom line. 

We encourage our members, supporters, and fellow institutions to support the reforms outlined in Campaign Zero, to support C.A.L.E.B. Chattanoogans in Action for Love, Benevolence, and Equity, specifically the community bail fund, to plan anti-racism and cultural competency training such as the program offered by Bridge City Community, and to look deeply at how your decisions impact your triple bottom line.