In Backdrop of Latest Elk Grove Hate Incident, City Council to Hear Recommendations to Address Racism

January 9, 2018 |  

Online petition seeking several changes also submitted | 

With the backdrop of Elk Grove's most recent racially motivated incident, the Elk Grove City Council will hear a commissioned report on how the community should deal with the issue.

At the Wednesday, January 9 meeting of the Elk Grove City Council will hear an agenda item regarding a recent study commissioned regarding community relations. That report was generated after the City held two community meeting regarding race relations.

Those meetings were held following two hate incident that happened late last summer. In one case an African-American owned business received threatening messages left at the establishment, and in the other instances, racist graffiti was painted on apartment units.

The recommendations generated in the report by the Mountain Valley Chapter of the American Leadership Forum were based on gathering input from two community meetings. The proposal includes the formation of racial healing circles, formal training of Elk Grove City key staff and leadership on implicit bias, follow-up surveys of meeting participants, and institutional and structural discussions.

Tomorrow's city council meeting will be held after another racial incident in Elk Grove that gained national media attention. In that event, on social media, a teenage girl posted hate speech directed at African Americans. 

As a follow-up to the incident, a story published by the Sacramento Bee featured a female African American student at Elk Grove Unified School District's Pleasant Grove High School who discussed what she characterized as rampant racism at the institution. The teenage girl who posted the hate message on social media was a student at Pleasant Grove.

Although not directly related, an online petition from a group calling themselves called Equality Elk Grove has also been submitted to the Elk Grove City Council. The petition, which was posted on Change.org, is asking the City of Elk Grove to, among other things, track hate crime incidents, switch to by-district city council elections, and the formation of a community policing commission.

Even though the item is not on the agenda, organizer Amar Shergill is encouraging attendance at Wednesday night's meeting to discuss the petition and the requests. The meeting will be held at Elk Grove City Hall and starts at 6 p.m.