Frontline Conversations: David Bowers Discusses Race, Anti-Racism and Community Healing

David Bowers, Enterprise VP and Mid-Atlantic market leader, joined Leadership Greater Washington (LGW) on June 8 to discuss race, anti-racism and community healing in LGW’s Frontline Conversations. Bowers is also an ordained minister and the founder of the all-volunteer No Murders DC movement, a coalition of concerned residents working to end murder in D.C.

In the course of the discussion, Bowers shared a list of sample actions created for those who have asked, “What can I do?” 

“You don’t build a wall all at once. It’s one brick at a time.”

15 Sample Actions to Help Dismantle Racism and Its Impacts 

1. Pray for the nation to confess and repent for its original sin of slavery.
2. Have conversations with friends and family about what steps they can take as individuals to deconstruct racism and its impacts. Challenge racist assumptions and actions.
3. White and Blacks share meals together at home.
4. Workplaces require anti-racism and bias in education and training.
5. Eliminate or curtail qualified immunity protections for police in abuse of force cases.
6. Require all police that interacts with the public to wear body-worn cameras.
7. Companies set targets and create systems to increase the recruitment, retention and promotion of Blacks at all levels of employment. Also, expand numbers on governing boards. Include accountability mechanisms.
8. Companies and governments set goals and systems to increase the use of Black-owned businesses in their supply chain (e.g., banks, lawyers, title companies, food service providers). Include accountability mechanisms.
9. Congress pass and president sign H.R. 40 – Commission to study and make recommendations regarding reparations to Black Americans.
10. Local governments enact local versions of H.R. 40.
11. Federal, state and local governments create action plans to eliminate the wealth, health and education gaps between whites and Blacks.
12. Increase funding and enact policy changes (like limits on risk-based pricing for home loans) at all levels of government to support increases in homeownership for African-Americans.
13. Federal government strengthen the community reinvestment act.
14. Increase federal, state and local support for community land trusts, cooperatives and tenant-organized purchase of for-sale rental buildings.
15. Municipalities create “peace room” structures to institutionalize the work to end murders in their jurisdictions – requiring performance benchmarks for all municipal agencies related to the prevention of homicide and also engaging private sector stakeholders.

More from David Bowers: So What, Now What? A Reflection on the Ongoing Movement for Racial Justice in the United States