Town of Lexington Share Toward An Equitable And Just Community

Press release from the Town of Lexington:

March 4, 2021

The Town of Lexington is committed to ensuring that Lexington is a safe, equitable and just community for all.

The Cary Lecture Series Presents “The Black Lives Matter Protests: An Early History”

Brandeis University Professor Chad Williams will lead us though an 'early history' of the BLM protests.

Williams is a noted historian, educator, public commentator and author of Torchbearers of Democracy, an award-winning book on African American soldiers in World War I.Saturday, March 20, 2021, 8:00 - 9:00 PM

Register for the Virtual Presentation

co-sponsored by Lexington's Cary Library

Our Town and School staff have been working on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice for several years.

• See our staff training, public programs and other work in this area.

Following the national dialog on issues of social and racial equity, in the summer of 2020, the Select Board began a more formal process of examining our policies, procedures and practices as they relate to municipal operations.

Our current efforts include:

• Engaging All Aces, Inc. to serve as our Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Transformation (DIET) partner. During this engagement, the Town will develop a comprehensive race equity plan to ensure that Lexington is an equitable community, employer, and place for business.
• Creating a Core Team made up of municipal staff at different levels across departments, which will collaborate with the Town Manager, Deputy Town Manager, and other leaders to advance this work.
• The Core Team will receive comprehensive Racial Equity training from All Aces as well as leadership development in how to recognize and disrupt inequitable policies and practices.
• Members of the CORE Staff Team will be expected to serve on various initiatives, projects, and working groups in conjunction with the Town’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plan.
• Creating a Citizen Advisory Council, made up of members from community organizations and committees that represent the diversity of Lexington’s population, which will serve as a resource for Town Leadership in the work to develop equity plans for the Town.
• Creating a new staff position in the Town Manager's Office responsible for DEI efforts.
• Establishing an online resource for all residents in conjunction with All Aces providing an interactive, curated space of equity resources, discussion and learning opportunities.
• Joining both the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) and the National League of Cities (NLC) in order to take advantage of their collective Racial Equity resources.
• Ongoing Racial and Social Equity update at every regular Select Board meeting.
• Holding a first community conversation on policing, moderated by a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion consultant from Equity and Expectations in September, 2020. Over 80 questions were asked and answered; the questions and answers are listed on the website.
• Engaging the services of Town Counsel to begin the work of reviewing all Town policies. The starting point of this work was a review of the Police Department policies to ensure there is no unintended bias or discriminatory language and to make recommendations to the Select Board.
• Creating Police Department videos explaining services offered to residents.

As we continue to move forward, we will post the status of these items on this page.

Racial Equity Focus Groups

All Aces, our consulting partner, held facilitated focus groups during the week of December 14, 2020 with representatives from cultural and community groups, Town staff and committee members and other interested community members.

The input provided through these focus groups, and the online comment form, will help All Aces make recommendations to Town staff and the community moving forward.

This press release was produced by the Town of Lexington. The views expressed here are the author’s own.