Tam Equity Campaign
Tam Equity Campaign is looking for defined and specific structural changes in the exclusive and the predominantly white communities in Southern and Central Marin in the cities of Sausalito, Mill Valley, Tiburon, Belvedere, Corte Madera, Larkspur, Greenbrae, San Anselmo, Strawberry, Fairfax, Ross, and Kentfield.
We are moving to compel a 20% reinvestment of municipal police department dollars of the incorporated cities of Southern and Central Marin into a county fund to expand mobile behavioral health crisis teams among other community support services as alternatives to law enforcement. These services would genuinely uplift people and would be county wide. From these cities alone, the contribution would be close to an annual $8,000,000 - and over the course of 10 years that would be a transmission of around $64,000,000 to crisis intervention, housing, and other community defined needs.
We also need to look legislatively to reduce the local control within exclusive affluent communities in their outrageous ability to build barriers to equity and integration. This means make affluent white communities more accountable and less autonomous in their ability to hoard resources in their zonings, their school districts, and municipal government.
But to make those ideas real, we have to tackle physical symbols of racism in our community to anchor ourselves. To make our activism visceral, our first focus to begin with is changing the name of Sir Francis Drake Blvd and the removal of Drake's effigy from the road. Drake was a facilitator of slavery and the killing of indigenous people, and is a figure that celebrates the the history of white supremacy in Marin. This history of violence in this is at the roots of our law enforcement system and municipal police budgets. His namesakes in the county and his statue are manifested forms of deep structural racism - and will be a rallying cry as we tackle the core policy and budgetary priorities of exclusive cities of Southern and Central Marin.