While non-motorized transportation is an important tactic for reducing emissions, many people still associate biking with something that kids do — or think of it as the last resort for people who can’t afford cars.

In BIPOC communities, that is compounded by external factors such as perceived or realistic safety issues, police harassment, and lack of access and infrastructure due to decades of disinvestment.

Olatunji Oboi Reed, president and CEO of the Equiticity Racial Equity Movement in Chicago, aims to change that.

“There are some systemic barriers that keep Black and Brown people driving, that keep Black and Brown people driving by themselves, that push Black and Brown people away from transit or cycling or walking. So, we’ve got to think about this holistically and at the systemic level … some of the systemic barriers that keep us from getting rid of our cars,” Reed said.

Based in North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side, Equiticity is a multifaceted, multi-racial organization focused on eliminating racial inequality. Reed, along with his staff and an active board of directors, guides the organization in its pursuit of racial justice — largely pedal-powered by bicycle.

For Reed and for Equiticity, getting more Black and Brown people on bikes is about more than recreation or even transportation. He sees it as a vehicle for enhanced community cohesion, economic development, and improved health outcomes for Black and Brown residents, whose life expectancy is a full decade lower than that of White residents of the city, in part due to poor air quality generated by fossil fuel combustion.

From Slow Roll to Equiticity

Reed, along with childhood friend Jamal Julien, launched Slow Roll Chicago — a local outpost of a global bicycle movement — in 2014 as a means of encouraging more Black, Brown and Indigenous people to embrace bicycling for both recreation and transportation. While Reed has stepped away from leadership, Slow Roll Chicago continues to work to strengthen community connections and development.

There are some systemic barriers that keep Black and Brown people driving … that push Black and Brown people away from transit or cycling or walking.

 

– Olatunji Oboi Reed, president and CEO of the Equiticity Racial Equity Movement

In 2017, Reed expanded his vision of promoting racial equity beyond Slow Roll Chicago with a well-attended soft open of Equiticity in Chicago’s tony River North neighborhood. A number of delegates from the National Association of City Transportation Officials conference, along with local advocates, supporters and members of the media, were in the audience. The new organization was initially tasked with a plan to establish bike libraries on the city’s predominantly Black and Brown South and West Sides.

Since then, the organization has expanded its programming reach while remaining firmly rooted within a framework of advocating for BIPOC communities. Today, Equiticity encompasses advocacy, social enterprises, and programming, along with “community mobility rituals” where Black, Brown and Indigenous people take to the road on two wheels.

Three of its major programs — the Mobility Opportunities Fund, GoHub Community Mobility Center and BikeForce Workforce Development Program — are specifically designed to make biking more accessible and affordable for Black and Brown riders by addressing inequities, disinvestment and disparities, along with promoting economic development. 

The Mobility Opportunities Fund

In November 2022, Equiticity launched the Mobility Opportunities Fund, supported by a grant of $448,950 from ComEd. The fund initially provided $350 for the purchase of a conventional bicycle, $750 for the purchase of an electric bicycle, $1,500 for the purchase of an electric cargo bicycle and $3,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle. (Stipends were later increased to $8,750 for EVs.)

Only four EVs were purchased using resources from the fund. However, community members bought 111 bikes, 85 electric bikes and 57 electric cargo bikes with their stipends, according to an August 2023 report on the program.

“When I came on board, I was very excited, because I understand being someone who resides in North Lawndale,” said Remel Terry, director of programs at Equiticity. “I understand the benefit of having alternative modes of transportation especially if you can’t afford a bike or even the cost of, as we’ve seen, gas and things of that nature.

“And then the overall climate-friendly aspect is also a big deal, in my opinion, and helping us to understand how to be more environmentally friendly without having to harp on things in the way sometimes it gets communicated.”

The GoHub Community Mobility Center

Equiticity is developing the GoHub Community Mobility Center to help address EV charging deserts along with other mobility and transportation needs for residents of North Lawndale.

“The GoHub would have charging stations accessible to the community who may have electric vehicles,” Terry said. “So, it’s really like a one stop shop bringing all of the various programs into a physical space within the community of North Lawndale.”

But the GoHub is not limited to facilitating EV adaptation. Reed envisions multiple functions to address transportation-related inequities that Black and Brown low- and moderate-income residents experience, some of which may not be readily apparent.

That includes “hardware” — physical infrastructure — and “software,” which Reed describes as “the work we do to socialize people around the act of mobility.”

“For us, that’s our community mobility rituals. We do community bicycle rides, neighborhood walking tours, public transit excursions, group scooter rides, and open streets festivals,” Reed said.

“We also, as a part of the GoHub, want to have a hyper-local advocacy coalition. So, these are people at the neighborhood level who identify the needs to grow our mobility. And then we organize ourselves to move the stakeholders and policy makers in the city to bring the resources to bear that we need to grow our mobility in our neighborhoods,” Reed said.

North Lawndale suffers from a high crime rate, which is highly publicized in local and national media. In acknowledging the prevalence of violence in the neighborhood, Reed also envisions the “software” of the GoHub as a means to reduce the presence of violence that can discourage residents from biking.

Equiticity’s research found that between 2014 and 2019, police disproportionately issued citations for bike riding on sidewalks on the West and South Sides, which are predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“Violence in our neighborhood is not something that we are able to pontificate about often. It is pretty close to us. Trauma is driving our concerns around mobility. So, we want to address trauma.

“We want mental health services to be a significant part of our work in the GoHub… We want space in the GoHub where that space is dedicated to other forms of healing to help people move through their trauma and begin to consider other modes of travel that, heretofore, they weren’t focused on,” Reed said.

Workforce development

Equiticity launched BikeForce in 2022 as a workforce development program for teens between the ages of 15 and 19 living in North Lawndale and adjacent communities. The apprenticeship program focuses on the emerging electric transportation sector, through the mechanics of e-bicycle construction, along with electric vehicles, e-scooters, battery systems, and electric motors. The Cook County Justice Advisory Council awarded Equiticity a $600,000 grant earlier this year, which allowed the program to expand to serve 60 trainees over 18 months.

“BikeForce is providing these participants with comprehensive and targeted mentorship, career services and workforce training in an emerging, environmentally sustainable sector — all while increasing access to climate-friendly mobility devices in North Lawndale,” Terry said in an email.

The apprenticeship program also provides networking and opportunities for living-wage jobs to as many as 30 young people each year. Participants who complete the program also receive a cash stipend of $1,100 and a non-electric bicycle, Terry said.

“They’ll be able to leave this program and be hired as a bike mechanic somewhere with the experience of also understanding the battery aspect of the electric bike, which is a very big deal,” Terry told Streetsblog in September.

Ongoing advocacy

Equiticity launched the Free 2 Move Coalition during the summer of 2022 to advocate for improvements in biking infrastructure and policy changes, especially around the issue of police harassment of Black and Brown bike riders, including aggressive enforcement of street crossing regulations and prohibitions against riding on the sidewalk. These types of stops increased exponentially as an alternative to stop-and-frisk, said Jose Manuel Almanza, director of movement and advocacy building at Equiticity.

“Right now, the Chicago Police Department can stop vehicles for a number of reasons, including a busted taillight, no registration or expired registration, [or] no city sticker — stuff that we think that should not be in the hands of the Chicago Police Department” Almanza said.

Equiticity’s research found that between 2014 and 2019, police disproportionately issued citations for bike riding on sidewalks on the West and South Sides, which are predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“At the same time, those areas have little to no biking infrastructure. So, it makes sense that people just feel safer riding on the sidewalk,” Almanza said. “So, we want to eliminate the CPD’s ability to ticket folks for these offenses, and at the same time invest in these neighborhoods to give them the space and the safety they need to ride their bike safely on the road.”

Like many Black and Brown communities, North Lawndale has suffered the effects of decades of disinvestment. However, dollars intended to mitigate disinvestment frequently don’t make their way to areas where they are most needed.

At the same time, initiatives to mitigate disparities are sometimes met with pushback — driven by mistrust and anxiety about displacement, and exacerbated by the failure of municipal and other entities to engage community stakeholders, Almanza said.

We really want to expand biking infrastructure. However, a lot of people on the West Side and South Side see biking infrastructure as a sign of gentrification. A lot of people think, well, who are these bike lanes really for?

 

– Jose Manuel Almanza, director of movement and advocacy building at Equiticity

“We really want to expand biking infrastructure. However, a lot of people on the West Side and South Side see biking infrastructure as a sign of gentrification. A lot of people think, well, who are these bike lanes really for? It just seems that whenever the city does any kind of improvements in, for example, North Lawndale or Little Village, we get priced out. And I think just seeing that over and over and over again, it just creates suspicion in people that, well, in the past, everything they’ve done was not for me. So why is this for me now?

“Different communities in Chicago have different needs and people who live here know what’s needed, know what’s working, know what isn’t. However, we just keep seeing a lack of engagement from city agencies when it comes to creating a plan around infrastructure. A lot of our communities have been here for a very long time, so there’s a lot of history in it, and it seems like a lot of that history isn’t taken into consideration.” Almanza said.

For Reed, advocacy, education and improving biking infrastructure are all integral to Equiticity’s mission of getting Black and Brown people on bikes — and having them feel safe riding.

“How are we going to convince somebody not to drive and they should walk or bike, and there’s no sidewalk? This is not a rural community. This is the city of Chicago. People consider this the welcome center to the country,” Reed said.

“Corporations are headquartered here. And we’ve got a neighborhood in our city with no sidewalk. And it’s been like that for decades. The intersection [at] 79^th and Stony [Island] is one of the most dangerous intersections in the state of Illinois. It’s been like that for generations. And we’re supposed to convince somebody in that neighborhood to ride a bike. I wouldn’t dare tell somebody to ride a bike on Stony Island. I wouldn’t ride a bike on Stony Island. So, we’ve got to improve the quality of our infrastructure. We’ve got to use infrastructure to reduce all types of violence, interpersonal, police, and vehicular. And this is taking place.”

This story originally appeared on Energy News Network and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

The post This Black-led non-profit is using cycling to build healthier communities and racial justice appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Meanwhile, protests have erupted across the world calling for racial equality and police reform. Although these protests have had little impact on the market, they’ve raised a good question: can investors support companies that promote minority empowerment while earning market-rate financial returns?

The NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF (ticker: NACP) is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Dallas-based Impact Shares, which specializes in socially conscious ETFs. According to its fact sheet, the NAACP ETF “is designed to provide exposure to U.S. companies with strong racial- and ethnic-diversity policies in place, empowering employees irrespective of their race or nationality.”

While the fund is not sponsored or endorsed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, it holds shares of companies screened according to 10 racial-equity metrics inspired by the NAACP’s opportunity and diversity report cards: criteria such as board diversity, freedom-of-association policies and conflict-mineral programs. To be included in the fund, companies must report on at least five of the 10 criteria and be free of major controversies. Research is performed by Sustainalytics (recently acquired by Morningstar), and the in-depth methodology can be found by downloading the “playbook” from the Morningstar site.

Incorporating social-equity criteria into the decision-making process is important work, but investors will question whether this requires a sacrifice in financial performance.

Since its inception in July 2018, the NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF has closely tracked and actually outperformed the S&P 500 by about 4%. I doubt that the outperformance is due solely to better social-equality scores (the fund skews toward bigger companies with more momentum), and we don’t know whether the outperformance will continue. But fund investors have been happy to earn higher-than-market-rate returns so far.
Investors considering the NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF should think of it as a replacement for a traditional U.S. equity fund in their portfolios. Despite the strong financial performance and social-equity lens, there are some negative trade-offs to consider. The fund currently contains only 172 companies – well below the 500 companies in the S&P 500 – which makes it less diversified. And with only about US$4 million in assets under management, liquidity issues could arise.

In addition, the fund has a high management-expense ratio (MER) of 0.75%, well above the 0.09% investors pay to own the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF. Although this might seem like a money grab, Impact Shares is a non-profit organization that donates any net proceeds from the ETF to the NAACP. Unfortunately, these fees come out of investment performance, and investors don’t get a charitable receipt. There is an argument to be made that investors would be better off paying a lower management fee and making their own donations to charities, non-profits or crowdfunding campaigns.

The NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF is clearly a big step toward investing in racially diverse companies, but does it go far enough? A quick look at its list of holdings reveals some big head-scratchers, such as Amazon. The methodology lets the e-commerce giant through because it publishes workforce race and gender data. What’s telling is that African Americans represent 26.5% of Amazon’s workforce but just 8.3% of management and 10% of the board of directors.

Amazon is also dealing with labour disputes inside its warehouses, as employees voice concerns over minimal protections against COVID-19. The company is notoriously anti-union and has fired workers who have attempted to organize employees – including Christian Smalls, a Black employee who led a walkout in March asking for better sanitation in Amazon’s Staten Island, New York, warehouse.

Amazon’s inclusion in the NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF speaks to the challenge of supporting corporate-diversity champions while earning market-rate returns. Ultimately, conscientious investors will need to decide for themselves whether the ETF’s methodology goes far enough, and whether they would be willing to sacrifice the financial returns from Amazon’s growth.

Whether it goes far enough or not, I’m happy there’s an option for investors to support companies that are leading on diversity policies and minority empowerment. The NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF might not be perfect, but it is a clear step in the right direction. I’m hopeful that data will continue to improve as investors ask tough questions about how companies are addressing racial inequality.

Tim Nash blogs as The Sustainable Economist and is the founder of Good Investing.

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Data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that nearly one-third of COVID-19 patients are black, even though they make up just 13% of the U.S. population. Numbers are similar for COVID-19 death rates. This pattern is true across nearly all jurisdictions that collect data.

In Canada, we don’t collect race-based data, but the information we have indicates a similar trend. People in North Montreal, the lowest-income neighbourhood in the Montreal Metropolitan Area, are falling ill and dying in greater per-capita numbers than in other neighbourhoods. Stats from Toronto Public Health show higher infection rates in areas with greater proportions of low-income people or newcomers.

Like climate change, COVID-19 is a threat-multiplier. Both crises compound and highlight existing inequities. As early as 2009, Scientific American pointed out that climate change will impact the poor most. Those who’ve had the smallest role in creating carbon emissions will pay the greatest price.

These days, there’s much talk about stimulus and recovery investments that could help us build back better, putting us in a stronger position to weather future shocks and crises. These are crucial discussions, but they must address equity.

Recent Anstice polling shows that we’re more compassionate and caring right now. People generally want others to be safe, have food, be able to pay their rent and have a chance to thrive in the future.

Even before the pandemic, an Abacus Data survey showed that Canadians are more supportive of climate and energy transition policies if policymakers demonstrate that they’ve thought about equity and included measures to ensure people who have been more marginalized aren’t negatively impacted by these policies.

And in a recent Ipsos public opinion poll, 61% of Canadians expressed that in the economic recovery from COVID-19, it’s important that government actions prioritize climate change.

Taken together, these polls suggest a path forward. If values have shifted toward care and compassion and away from consumerism, and if people in Canada are more supportive of energy transition policies and investments, then now is the time to advance policy and investments that address equity and reduce climate risk while creating more just, inclusive communities.

There are reasons to be hopeful.

The Canadian Urban Sustainability Practitioners have a new tool that explores energy poverty.  It shows that in my community, Vancouver, visible minority households are twice as likely to experience energy poverty. Often inequities are hidden, but if we can see them, we can begin to address them. And this will likely resonate with people, especially right now. Tools like this could help governments make decisions that address greenhouse gas reductions, job creation, health and equity.

For example, instead of incentives for single-family housing retrofits, there may be more co-benefits to addressing retrofits for low-income, multi-family housing or social housing. There may also be more public support for these initiatives.

In online meeting rooms across the country, elected officials and government staff at all levels are debating how to advance climate policies that also improve health and resilience as we emerge from the pandemic. Some are putting active transportation infrastructure in place to help with physical distancing and provide healthy mobility options that get people outdoors. Others are considering building retrofit projects that create jobs.

I hope they also consider the polling that shows people’s values are coalescing around empathy and caring, and that even before the pandemic, there was higher support for policies that address equity.

We now have the opportunity to work together to build a future that’s headed toward net-zero carbon, that’s more resilient, healthier, equitable and inclusive. We’ll need to rely on our values, clarity of purpose and courage to try new things, and to learn and adapt so that we can truly build back better.

Sherry Yano is the community renewable energy manager at the David Suzuki Foundation

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It’s long overdue for us to stand up and work together to shape a future which is just, equal, inclusive and deeply grounded in fundamental human and civil rights.

Fully addressing systemic racism and inequality will be neither simple nor straightforward, but we cannot shy away from the challenge any longer. It will require a unified approach, pulling together the voices and resources of the whole of society—including individuals, community groups, policy-makers, corporations and investors—putting those most impacted at the heart of the conversation.

Today we’re calling on the PRI community and all responsible investors around the world to answer this call to action. As long-term stewards of capital we have the ability, and in fact the duty, to create change not only through our words, but also through our actions in leveraging the global financial system.

As long-term stewards of capital, we have the ability, and in fact the duty, to create change not only through our words, but also through our actions in leveraging the global financial system.

As part of our investment processes, we must prioritise engagement on ESG issues which directly and indirectly perpetuate inequality. To hold corporations and policy-makers to account, we must push for public disclosure on racial diversity and related metrics by which we can assess progress against concrete outcomes.

We must work to tackle inequality through embedding the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights into our investment process. Enabling awareness, facilitating education and ensuring a trusted safe space for people to effectively promote respect for human rights is paramount. And we must work to support and maintain our democratic institutions as an important pillar that underpins fair and just societies and the rule of law. This includes facing issues around modern slavery and human trafficking in supply chains, labour force reform, living wages and social protections for employees.

We must also reflect inward at the composition of our portfolios, the stakeholders we work with and invest in and the diversity, inclusion and values within our own workforce. Our industry has a long way to go to achieve these things. We’re urging the global financial services community to join us at the PRI in recommitting to make these issues our top priority, both within our own organisation and the world we operate in.

Racism, discrimination and inequality are entrenched in both the personal and systemic foundations of our society and they will continue to violate the human rights of black people unless we confront them head on. Responsible investors have a powerful platform and a critical role to play in creating a better future. We must seize this moment in history to listen, learn and seek solutions together.

Fiona Reynolds is the CEO of the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, or PRI. A version of this article was first published on unpri.org.

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