Welcome to People.Power.Perspectives, the podcast where we talk to the people that are working to overcome system inequities to achieve just outcomes.
Hi, welcome to another episode of People.Power.Perspectives. I'm Marcel Harris with CA4Health and today I'm speaking with Oussama Mokeddem, the state policy director with Public Health Advocates, we will focus our conversation on efforts to understand racism as a public health crisis and moving beyond those declarations to get us started, Oussama tell us a little about yourself, and what brought you to work in the equity and justice space.
Thank you, Marcel. Yeah, I would say I'm a lifelong advocate. From a young age growing up as a Muslim in America, in a post 911 world, you were forced to advocate for yourself at every corner, there were a lot of misconceptions around what it meant to be Muslim in America, regardless of your race, or your ethnic background, and your socio economic status. So Muslims in the United States really had to advocate for their identity, whatever that meant, you know, from day one. So I found myself as a young middle school student, not really being represented in my school curriculum. I was one of those students that hated studying history, because history never reflected my history and never reflected the history of people who look like me. It was something that, you know, it was just very bizarre until one day in high school, one of my history teachers kind of gave us an approach that was a bit different than usual. And from that point, studying the existence of black people in the United States, the forced displacement of black Africans from the coast of West Africa, into the Caribbean, and then into the United States. And then the development from there on really fascinated me. I moved beyond that into the advocacy space. And from a young age I was, you know, as a resident of Sacramento, I was at the State Capitol in high school, knocking door to door, visiting assembly members and senators dropping off letters of support for bills that impacted my community is a very valuable experience that now looking back at it, I don't see many people do let alone people who are that young, I was blessed to be surrounded with mentors to be surrounded by adults who empowered me. And that showed me that my voice mattered, no matter how old I was. And no matter what the color of my skin was, from that point on, I really was a believer in advocacy, I believe that no matter the issue, if you can educate people enough, and empower them enough, and give them an avenue to advocate for themselves, that the sky was the limit. From there on my educational career took that shift from someone who did not like history at all growing up, you know, becoming someone who studied and specialized in African American Studies and Political Science, kind of bridging the gap between my African identity. And then my want to understand the American political system, the global political system, society, how people interact, how people, you know, solidify their identity in their societies. And that, you know, was a really fruitful journey and experience that yielded many positive results and ultimately ended in me joining public health advocates, which you know, after several years in the Civil Rights world, and working on religious freedoms, and ethnic and, you know, race based a freedom shifting to field like public health, which is ever so expanding, and inclusive of the conversation of racism as a public health crisis.
Awesome, well, I learned something new about you that I didn't know. And so I really appreciate you sharing. And I know in our earlier conversations, we've talked and discussed about advocacy. And so from your perspective, can you share why advocacy is so important?
I think advocacy and my parents joke with me all the time saying like, you're such an advocate, everywhere I go people say you're such an advocate, because every time something doesn't, I don't want to say doesn't go my way, but something doesn't really match my way of life. I question it, right. There's a sense of curiosity that comes with advocacy. Your curiosity has to be there in order for you to seek out options, right? I think the basis of advocacy is curiosity. It's the question of why, why does this have to be this way? And in a society like ours, that's so I want to say diverse on the ground, but not so diverse at the top, you always have to ask why things are a certain way. I think that moving into a more structured advocacy, you have channels through which you can ask why. And you can engage with local government, you can engage with elected officials, and you can ask them what their perspective is on particular issues and why but then on the ground, you see a lot more diversity, and that advocacy happens at a natural rate, it happens in a very natural way, you're not necessarily a structured advocate. But as you move as the person you are, you're always trying to ensure that the way you live your life that your identity follows you wherever you go. And in order to do that, there's a certain sense of advocacy that comes along with that there's a certain level of advocacy that you have to do in order to solidify your presence in different spaces, where you go to the grocery store, and you're who you are. So people who that interact with, you have to interact with you as you are, if someone you know, and this happened to me a lot growing up as someone has a misconception, I come from a family where my mother wears the hijab, so she's very visibly Muslim. So when you go to the grocery store, especially I grew up at relatively white working class neighborhood, people have those curious looks, not necessarily malicious all the time. But curious, I came from a family where my mom didn't really shy away from that curiosity, very curious person. So she would talk to them Be like, Hi, how are you? Right, just like get all up in the face. And, you know, whatever questions or curiosity they had, and any barrier to that curiosity was diffused. So it became a safe environment to ask questions that you might not have the answer to. And then after those barriers are diffused, then you're able to advocate for yourself, then you're able to explain why you live your life a certain type of way, right. And then we see that at the structural level, where in order to advocate for yourself with different bodies of government, you have to break down those barriers, those things that stand in the way of you, as a member of whatever community you come from, and those who represent you.
I appreciate that and I know that there's many different levels of advocacy, whether it's individual, systemic, but as someone who's worked in advocacy, the past couple of years, I always appreciate the work is no matter. As daunting. It is, though discussions are critical in that context is critical, especially for policymakers, who at times are really detached from the issue or from the constituents. And so I really appreciate this conversation. And I know we wanted to focus a little bit on the declarations. And so I know across the country, local and state leaders are working to pass declarations declaring racism, a public health crisis, when I was first looking at this, about two or three years ago, there was about 34 declarations. Now there's at least 260 of those 38 are here in California. And we know these declarations, resolutions, proclamations are an important first step. But really to advance racial equity must be followed by strategic action. So I'm wondering if you can describe, you know, what it means to declare racism a public health crisis, why it's important, and what you hope it will change?
Great question, I think, first, it's worthy to note that racism is a public health crisis. It doesn't need to be declared per se. It's just being acknowledged. So that is like the very, very first step philosophically, to accept that the reality of the United States is that racism is a public health crisis, meaning that when people encounter racism, whether it be in the street, at work, when interacting with individuals, that it affects different components of their life, or what we call the social determinants of health, whether its economic, whether it's it relates to food and water access, whether it relates to climate and the environments people live in, whether it refers to health care, all of these different social determinants of health are impacted by racism. And that's what we mean by racism is a public health crisis within the lens of public health, that racism impacts people's physical, social, emotional, psychological health, in ways that otherwise wouldn't be impacted. So that's step one, is to acknowledge that racism is a public health crisis and has been a public health crisis in this country. We are just now catching up. So beyond that step, we saw after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, that racism was being declared a public health crisis across the United States, and in particular, within a lot of localities in the state of California, which is seen as more progressive. The cynic might ask why the advocate definitely asks why but the cynic might ask why, with a projection in mind, saying that the country was in such a volatile state, that in order to ensure that, you know what they called a race war, to ensure that that was avoided, that we declare racism as a public health crisis to please those who are advocating for that. So that's what the cynic might say. But you know, the advocate looks at it in a much more dynamic way, and acknowledges that the declarations are a good first step. Like I mentioned earlier, in order to advocate for yourself you have to break down the barriers hers, and the barriers have to be broken down together, likening it to the curious stare from the woman at the grocery store. In order for that barrier to be broken, my mom might go up to her and say hi or whatnot. But there has to be feedback, it can't be a one way street. If the woman just gives her the cold shoulder and walks away that barriers are broken. But in order for that barrier to be broken, there's a mutual involvement. Once that barrier is broken, meaning we've declared racism as a public health crisis, we have to add substance to it. And in the US substance looks like dollars, and it looks like resources. This has been the crux of the conversation. Where is the follow up to declaring racism as a public health crisis? All we've done is break down a barrier, we've declared it okay, it's out there in the open, we've caught up to the reality with our words, what are we doing with our actions in order to catch up to that reality as well? What are we doing with our actions in order to bridge the gaps that disproportionately impact people of color in the United States? What are we doing with our actions to avoid another situation in which a black man is murdered by law enforcement in broad daylight, recorded and publicized on television for everyone in the country to see? How do we avoid that? What are the actions we can take in order to avoid those situations, and ultimately ensure that everybody in the United States is living a healthy and positive life and a high standard for quality of life, not just the dollar amount that you earn per year.
I appreciate you sharing that I wrote down and acknowledged, because I really feel like that is that first step of declaring and acknowledging the systems, the disparities, but even some of those protocols and procedures, and taking a deeper look at how folks do business in a way to improve outcomes for folks. And I'm curious, what are some of the challenges to even get to the point of passing declarations?
The number one challenge is a lack of willingness to engage with and entertain that curiosity. Right now, we're living in unprecedented times. We live in a country that has a very solidified government structure. I'll be at a young young one, you will live in the UK where there's like 1000s of years, government law and law structure. But we live in a country where there's a pretty solidified solidified democratic structure. As we're navigating these unprecedented times, we're really exploring different ways to make that work for everybody. It's not working for everybody. One of the big challenges is a lack of engagement with that curiosity being told this is how we do things, or none of that's not how you're going to get it done. Like why not? Why is that not how I'm gonna get it done? If we can work together to find ways that are equitable, and just in order to achieve our goals? Why can that not be the way that we do it? I think that risk adversity when it comes to exploring new and different ways to address the issue is probably one of the biggest challenges and obstacles because that doesn't even get us past the conversation. What that then also does, is that it points back at the declarations, and it says, but we declared it as a public health crisis. So it's like there's a willingness to go beyond it. But at any uncomfortable point in time, we'll turn back and say, but we've made progress, right? But what we're trying to say is that we really haven't we just opened the door for progress, declaring it is opening the door for progress. We haven't gone through the door yet. The door being opened as a passive thing. You have to like take that step to go through the door. And a step is an action and actions again in the United States revolve around dollars and resources. So we have to ensure that we take that first step and move beyond that and move beyond the challenge of turning away people who question why we do things a certain way.
Appreciate that, in order to move beyond declarations and looking outside of reallocating allocations, shifting resources, looking at how much is spent on budgets, over a third of the city's budget, resources are allocated to police departments. And so I'm curious, what will it take for efforts to go beyond declarations?
There's one word that really comes to mind when I think of efforts and that's community, right? We have terms now, like community based community oriented community first, we're seeing the rise of community. And our constitution really hinges on we the people. So it's community oriented from the start of this race, and we need to bring it back to the community in order to ensure that progress is made. So what we've done is we've developed these structures that may have worked for a certain segment of the community, let's say 150 years ago, or you know, 200 years ago And now our communities look very different. We live in a globalized society. We're a huge exporter of culture. So what does that mean when we're looking at how we govern our communities, and the way we govern our communities in the United States is a very top down approach, that's become a challenge, because as soon as something comes up from the bottom, you can just put it to the side, because it's not coming from the top. Like, we have a saying, in our culture that's like, Oh, it came from the top, it's coming down from the top, that means like, we got to act on it, we don't have this concept of coming from coming up from the bottom. But like, at the end of the day, even as humans, when we walk, we're supported by the parts of our body that are on the bottom. Those are the supports, those are what allow us to even go beyond and move physically in our world and go beyond that stationary state that we would otherwise be in. So our communities are essentially our sensory wing. They're the ones that that give us sensory feedback as to how our governance is doing. That's really the big solution. The concrete actions that we can take are to establish community first community based community oriented ways to get feedback doesn't always have to be governed. But the governance has to include avenues and pathways for feedback, and then the incorporation of that feedback.
I really appreciate you sharing. So when I was first analyzing the declarations, I kept looking for our entities engaging with the community. And today, that's still unclear. And I think depending on where you are, what entity, whether it's a city council, Board of Supervisors, that looks different. And I also really appreciate you touching on taking the feedback and then doing something with it. At times, you see the general here's a p ublic comment we've heard from the community, but then you don't see that reflected in the plans. And then we wonder why outcomes aren't matching, and folks are upset. And so I really appreciate you shedding light on the importance of community. And I'm wondering if you want to spend some time talking about any local examples, whether that be here in Sacramento, or outside, maybe that's really utilizing that community input as part of this process.
I think the community based effort that it takes is something that's not easy. In order to get community, you have to get diverse representation. And with diverse representation, you get a diversity in thought, you get a diversity in practice and way of life, and you get a diversity and vision. So from the get go, you have to establish a common ground, a common vision, a common mission, to move forward. Right. So there's always a given take, not everybody can have it 100% entirely their way. But our way has to be inclusive of those individual ways in a way. That's, that's just and that's equitable. That's to acknowledge, and I do want to acknowledge that it's not easy, you don't just be like, Hey, I'm gonna go pick up 15 people from the city. And then like, ask them what they want. And that's what I do, I just give them what they want. That's not how it's gonna work. And communities also have their own governance structures, they have their leadership, they have the people who they look up to, they have the people who they trust to represent their interests and their needs. There's already a layer of representation that you can tap into in order to get that feedback. And that's where it starts. I'm reminded of the example after the murder of George Floyd. In Sacramento, there was the creation of a racial equity network, right, a bunch of different organizations and leaders partnered in order to put together a network that can advise the city of Sacramento, on issues related to equity, as it relates to governance in the many different areas that the City Council works on. That's a really great way. Of course, it has its challenges. And we are in unprecedented times, like I said, and we're being curious, we're testing different methods of success. We're going to fail, we're going to make mistakes. And we're going to upset people, whether it be people at the top or people on the on the ground, people are going to be upset. So we just have to have an develop mechanisms for which all of those different factors are seen as feedback are seen as sensory feedback for our actions, and then put mechanisms in place for which we account for those. We take a break, we stop and we say, hey, we messed up right here. How did it impact people? Because what you don't want to do is say like, Hey, we have this racial equity network going on. And you know, we want to do stuff that's great for everybody and like people are getting mad and you're like, No, no, they don't see the vision. Right? No, put mechanisms in place to take a pause to get more feedback and be like, Okay, should we pivot? Or should we continue going and just have a more involved conversation with the people who are upset to ensure that although we didn't pivot that we're taking feedback and input so that it's influencing and educating our next steps. That network turned into a commission. So now the city of Sacramento has a commission that advises its representative of different communities across Sacramento. So that's a method, I don't like to call these things, uh, when we're still on the path, we're still engaging with and feeling out our methods of success. And all we can really do is commit to working and trying to make these things work out. But as we know, with, you know, human nature, you got to pivot, and you always got to like deal with new things that come up.
I appreciate you sharing that. And I know that, regardless of what the work is an advocacy, there's multiple challenges, and always look at that as lessons, lessons learned ways to adapt how we are doing business, also thinking through what's working really well. And how can we expand that to include multiple voices and multiple opportunities for input. And I'll be honest, sometimes when it's within government, that's not always clear, or that's not always possible. But I really think that there there is a great need to really think through how we engage community outside of the traditional, come to this long board of supervisors meeting. And so I think that that's the beauty of our work, as well as using our platform to really uplift voices and bring more people into the decision making process. And so moving forward, you know, what opportunities exist for the various stakeholders to learn about efforts to declare racism, a public health crisis, and commit to action? And then with that, what partnerships are most crucial in this work?
This will answer the second question. And I wanted to go back to this because you mentioned bringing people to like board a supervisory meetings, things like that. I come from an organizer background. So like in the organizing world, we have this concept of meet the community where they're at, you meet them where they're at, you meet them at the community barbecue, you meet them at their houses of worship, you want to make the effort to reach the community, where they are, where they feel most comfortable and safe. Not everyone feels safe showing up to city hall, I promise you that. Not everyone feels vulnerable enough, beyond the one minute public comment limit, or the three minute public comment limit to express themselves. But if I'm at the park, or I'm at my house of worship, I guarantee you I can spend a little more than a minute expressing myself. And that one minute will be much more impactful because I feel safe, I feel comfortable, I feel loved. I feel like I'm in community, those barriers are breaking down. Whereas if I'm engaging with government in a government building, I'm already thinking about, like how to make the most out of this minute, and all of that, whatever the results of that are threatened in terms of impact. So that's the biggest thing for me, right? I think that's the biggest partnership, engaging with what we call stakeholders, community stakeholders. We have policy and advocacy organizations like public health advocates, whose sole job it is to just connect those voices continue use whatever status or history or repertoire we have with government, whether it's legislative, whether it's administrative, to connect those voices, to essentially provide a platform for those voices to be heard. So I think that that's the trifecta, right is the the community, the advocates, and the representatives or the elected officials, connecting those three in a very equitable, safe and transparent way. And it goes both ways. By the way, transparency isn't just Community Voices, or elaborating on what you experience or your needs or the issues that impact you the most. It's also understanding how government operates, what government is funding, what issue areas and needs, whatever that means in government terms, or the equivalent in government terms means an understanding that the community understands that needs to understand that. So there's a certain level of education that government entities have to engage in, and then opportunities that are out there. PHA has a list of resources, a number of resources. When it comes to declaring racism as a public health crisis. There are a number of podcast recordings, there are a number of documents that have been put out there that you can find on our website that speak to this in different ways. And there are a number of organizations like the APHA and CARE that have put out resources for the community, both in English and Spanish for people to learn more about racism as a public health crisis and what that means beyond the catchphrases and now we talk about racism, that's such a loaded word. Now we talk about public health crisis that's such a loaded word so it can either be dismissed or it can be hyper sensationalized to an extreme. Those resources help us really understand substantively what these things mean.
I really appreciate you Oussama not just for the work that you do, but taking time to share. And I had to throw in here, I think it was last year, there was a health equity and racial justice sort of rally. And I believe you're one of the speakers and I went out watching the street, the think it was cold that day, but the way that you held space and talked about the importance of advocacy and bringing community in, while I was like, man, we got to get this dude on the podcast, we've got to continue collaborating and working together. And so I really appreciate who you are in the world. And I really look forward to continue working with you. And you could share anything else that you want to share before we end or how people can find you.
Public health advocates website, that's really where I operate, I operate in the state policy world. It's funny that you mentioned the health equity racial justice fund, because that's actually a perfect example of what it looks like to address racism as a public health crisis. There have been issues with declaring it at the state and things like that. But the health equity and racial justice fund is really an attempt at filling those gaps in the state investments, like I said, dollars and resources, filling those gaps by supporting the community organizations that are working directly with these impacted communities across our state, whatever they look like. Those are the trusted partners that we have on the ground. And those are the members that can address the key drivers of the health disparities in the areas such as like food access, building healthier community environments, and tackling racism head on. So that's a perfect, I'm so happy you mentioned because that's a perfect manifestation of what it means to address racism as a public health crisis beyond the declarations. So phadvocates.org. We have a lot of resources on whether it be state policy ways to get involved in state policy advocacy. I want to see people knocking on doors at the state capitol. I have to go to state capitol, I go there every day. But I know what it feels like to be there as a manifestation of your own will and your own want. And it's beautiful. Seeing people understand that it is their right to be in that building. You don't have to have a suit on. You don't have to be qualified as a lobbyist. And you don't have to be a solidified advocate like advocate with the big A like no, you are an advocate, you are a member of the society. And that white building in the middle of downtown Sacramento is your building. So ultimately, that's actually the best way to reach me. I want to see you in that building me at the state capitol come up to me and say, Hey, I heard you on this podcast or I saw you talking about this. And that's really how the community building happens. So thank you so much, Marcel. You uplift these voices. This podcast is really a manifestation of that what I was talking about that day at the rally is really things like this. Uplifting the voices, whether they be in that trifecta, whether they be community advocate, or government uplifting those voices to help understand where this conversation can be taken. So I really thank you for that. I really appreciate you.
Awesome to our listeners. Thank you for checking out another episode of People.Power. Perspectives. Stay tuned for more coming soon.
