Safe(r)

As a bi-racial former foster child raised in an all-white rural town in the Pacific Northwest, Marnita Schroedl has taken her experiences with disparity and disconnection, in combination with her expertise as a senior communications professional, and developed an experience engineering model designed to help others learn to part with their preconceived notions of “the Other” long enough to work together to create meaningful, grassroots change on issues that affect our diverse communities.

The model she developed, Intentional Social Interaction (or “IZI”) is a replicable, measurable way to deliver cross-cultural competency while simultaneously developing leadership, engaging communities across difference, and conducting participatory action research. Over the past fifteen years, nearly 70,000 community members, decision-makers and other constituents have come together in the model of IZI to find common ground on issues ranging from public health, education access to collective resilience, healing from trauma, women’s rights and youth leadership.

We are committed to addressing the disaster of police violence against black, brown and other marginalized people, a crisis of public health and safety that requires urgent redress. Using our model of Intentional Social Interaction (IZI), we will host engaged, action-oriented community conversations – beginning in Minneapolis and expanding outward – around the issue of police violence. Our goals for these conversations include the collaborative development of: 

1. Actionable public policy strategies to decrease state sponsored violence against black and brown people;

2. A model that can be reproduced; and

3. Uncovering talent and innovative solutions that already exist for more effective partnership and resource-sharing. 

We must elevate Black, Brown and other marginalized voices and ensure their voices are centered in any policies addressing police brutality. With funding we can immediately commence this work, ensuring that the voices of the disproportionately affected communities are given their rightful place in decisions. 

The costs of police violence against Black, Brown and other marginalized communities are staggeringly high. There is no comprehensive national database on police violence and instead we rely upon individual cities self-reporting. We already know that people of color – especially Black and Indigenous community members – are killed at a much higher rate than white people in the same cities. The Mapping Police Violence Project (mappingpoliceviolence.org) has demonstrated that in Minneapolis, Black residents are 13 times as likely to be killed by the police while Latinx residents are almost 6 times as likely to be killed in police custody.  

In 2014, the ten largest Police Departments collectively paid out $248.7 Million in settlements and court judgments. In 2017, New York City paid out $302 million dollars in police misconduct lawsuits. 

The public health costs are certainly even higher. The impact of violence by police against communities has been shown to negatively affect a range of health outcomes, including diabetes and obesity. This Is a public health crisis that must be addressed directly in partnership with communities that are most negatively impacted if we are to create an equitable and just society.

Starting in Minneapolis, we will convene community members, leaders and local officials focusing on ensuring that we are centering BIPOC and other oppressed voices. Together we will develop an actionable plan and strategy for reducing and eliminating violence against Black, Brown and other oppressed groups.

Our model of Intentional Social Interactions creates a neutral and safer environment for marginalized community members to interact directly with local leaders and officials. We do this by ensuring our public meetings are at least 51% BIPOC so that the communities most affected are represented and that local community leaders build authentic relationships with the communities they serve. We will host multiple community meetings, for now online due to Covid-19, and ensure we are reaching the most excluded communities so they can take their rightful place at the decision making table. 

Utilizing direct feedback from different groups we can then work with the community to create a unified vision that is locally and bottom-up generated for ending violence against Black and Brown people. Relationships formed between community members are imperative to ensure that local leadership is held accountable to the community. This is how we ensure the sustainability of this project. 

Safe(r) was created to serve the public safety and public health needs of community and to bring justice and restorative healing to the communities most affected by state violence in the United States. Any solution must be created with consultation and buy-in by the communities most affected by state violence. 

Our model, IZI, was built to create spaces for the unheard to find voice and foster connections across systems to better respond to inequities across healthcare, education, and social justice by providing the tools and environment for people to connect and collaborate more effectively across differences. We hire local community connectors to ensure we are reaching as widely as possible. We provide meals to families that may not otherwise be able to attend and when needed we are providing devices and/or cellular data services to ensure we are minimizing the tech gap as much as possible. 

We exist solely to elevate the voices of oppressed and excluded people and communities and ensure they take their rightful place at the decision making table. The health and future of our community demands that we must collectively heed and and raise up these voices to solve our toughest challenges. 

We believe that our project applies to all three dimensions. Ultimately, the only way to drive action toward solving the challenge of police brutality is to elevate the voices of those traditionally oppressed and left behind. Their voices must be prioritized in order to ensure we are creating a sustainable and actionable plan while ensuring the community buys into it. Our model of IZI, works by elevating understanding between people and changing people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviors by removing their preconceived notions of the other long enough for them to form an authentic connection with someone different from them. 

Our office is three miles from 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed by four police officers. This wasn’t the first time there had been police violence against Black and Brown people in the Twin Cities, but the outpouring of community anger, rage and sadness was palpable. In the days following as many in the city rose up, we felt that we must step up to create the space for solutions and help heal our communities. We have worked extensively in Minneapolis for our entire history as an organization. The previous two years, we have organized  a community gathering on the 38th Street Bridge over 35W Highway in Minneapolis in partnership with City Councilwoman Andrea Jenkins. Bringing together two historically diverse neighborhoods in South Minneapolis that were intentionally separated by the building of the 35W Interstate. We have the partnerships, the expertise and the experience to do this right now, starting in Minneapolis, we just need the funding. 

Marnita grew up in an all white town outside of Seattle, Washington in the 1960s and 1970s. She was born to a Black father and a white mother. She was given up by her biological mother after her biological grandmother gave an ultimatum to put her up for adoption or be expelled from the family. She left home at the age of 16 and has been self-supporting ever since. Marnita moved to Minneapolis from Los Angeles and founded The Table in 2005. She created the model of Intentional Social Interaction to ensure no one else would have to grow up this way and feel unwanted. 

We have 15 years of experience bringing people together across differences to address public policy issues. We have worked extensively in Minnesota and across the United States, and are proud to say that we are trusted by the communities of color in Minnesota because of our history of working together collaboratively. We have developed relationships and partnerships with local leaders and officials, community organizations, organizers and activists, foundations and businesses. Our model of Intentional Social Interactions was created to address issues like this and create a space where collaboration and problem solving can be done across differences of race, class and culture. We have brought together 70,000 people in the past 15 years and have meaningfully facilitated changes in attitudes and behaviors towards traditionally excluded and oppressed communities.

The vast majority of our staff and leadership team come from communities most affected by state violence and have grown up with this specter of violence their whole lives. This is not just a passing fad, it is something we live every day and we must come together to solve this problem. 

Our organization has been holding public community events over a meal for 15 years. Before the onset of Covid-19 in the United States, we had never canceled an event in our history. As a result of Covid-19, we had to figure out how to do what we do online and virtually. There was no guarantee that our current partners would continue to work with us while we all began social distancing for the good of our communities. Additionally, our events and model of Intentional Social Interaction has depended on in person experience engineering to create space open to collaboration across difference.

Due to the talent and expertise of Marnita’s leadership and our team – and in the span of one week – we were able to create an online virtual experience comparable to our in-person events. We were able to demonstrate to our partners that we are able to host engaging public events while still bringing people across differences to build relationships and solve problems. We’ve actually hired more staff during this crisis to keep up with the demand. 

Marnita built this organization that started out with two employees to a team of more than 10 staff. Nearly 70% of the organization's revenue comes from someone that hires us. Through this growth, Marnita’s Table has sustainably built expertise and capacity to engage in bigger and bigger projects. She has hired and helped develop an internal team made up of women and non-binary leaders of color. Many of our staff started by attending a Marnita’s Table event and are proof of the success of the model. Marnita is proud that so many of the young people that started out coming to Table events chose to work for the Table when given the chance.  In the past year we have hosted events in Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Diego, London, Mat-Su, Kansas City. 

Marnita created the model of Intentional Social Interaction (IZI) to bring people together across difference long enough to create an authentic connection and catalyze collaboration around challenging public policy issues. IZI is an experience engineering model, we use the same technology that retailers use to persuade people to part with their money to instead have people part with their preconceived notions of the ‘other’. We create neutral space, in-person and virtually, that centers the conversation in the voices and needs of traditionally excluded and oppressed communities. A collaboratively developed plan to reduce and end state violence against Black and Brown people must be embedded with the stories and experiences of the local communities most affected. Community leaders and local officials must build connections with the traditionally excluded communities within their spheres of influence. 

Any conversation about violence against Black and Brown people is going to feature trauma, both primary and secondary trauma. Our past work in addressing community trauma will be interwoven into our project. We’ve found that creating safer spaces for affected communities can be in and of itself a space for healing. 

IZI does all of this simultaneously while building the relationships within the community that are necessary to ensure the work on the ground is sustainable and accountable.

Our community events are a catalyst for change. A young person meets a business owner looking for new employees or interns. A family in need of health resources meets a local county health commissioner. Community members meet other interested community members and form their own groups to address the biggest issues in their communities. Small town local elected officials meet a family of immigrants over a meal. We believe that many, if not all the solutions can be found, we just need to ensure that their voices are heard. 

We believe strongly in what we call the domino and cue ball theory of change. Someone attends our events and may feel more comfortable connecting with someone across difference. Then they leave and build a connection with someone at work that they never had considered before. We believe that by activating and catalyzing change in one room, we can begin to affect an entire community.

By building connections between community decision-makers and community members we can develop the relationships that change attitudes and transform behaviors. 

As we move from design to implementation, we anticipate that we will be directly reaching out to up to 1,000 people to participate in Minneapolis over the span of one year. In 5 years, our goal is to have brought this work to at least 10 cities across the United States and have directly reached at least 10,000 participants in communities nationwide. Depending on the funding we raise for this project, we may be able to serve many more, given that the project is designed to be maximally scalable and locally held by partners and collaborators on the ground. We have trained more than 3,000 people in how to host their own events using our model and the project’s long term goal would be to ensure that it continues beyond our direct involvement in an area and works to strengthen and deepen local and regional relationship and resource networks. 

Within the next year, we plan to launch the Minneapolis pilot for this project, using the time to collaboratively develop a community-based and community-driven action plan for the city of Minneapolis to meaningfully address violence against Black and Brown people and reduce state violence. Provided with sufficient resources to ensure success, within the next 5 years, we will bring this model of shared decision-making and community-engaged policy making to cities across the country, creating a national model for grassroots change. 

From the events themselves, in each area we are in we intend for: 

1. Actionable public policies collaboratively agreed upon  that decrease state sponsored violence against black and brown people; 

2. Build a model that can be reproduced either in part or in its entirety in other places;

3. Building collaborations in community, uncovering talent and innovative solutions that exist within our communities.

Our primary barrier at the moment is funding. We believe that with adequate funding we can address the technical barriers. We have the experience and expertise to do this project, locally we have the connections and local trust to credibly bring people together for a community solution. Although this is a new project for us, we have been doing different elements of this conversation for years and have experience dealing with difficult conversations involving tremendous community trauma. Ultimately, to expand to doing this across the country for more than one at a time will take more staff to increase organizational ability to manage all these projects. 

Another barrier right now is the technology access gap made more apparent by Covid-19. We often work with many poorer and rural communities, places with inconsistent access to stable wireless internet. As long as Covid-19 is ravaging this country, we will be unable to hold public events and be restricted to online virtual events. It is imperative that we do not forget about those least able to participate in civic life right now. 

For funding we have been reaching out directly to a variety of community partners, foundations, and corporations to fund the first phase of this project. There are business leaders in Minnesota that have committed to helping us raise funding to do this project. We have received commitments for a part of the initial funding, but we are currently looking at a variety of grants in the meanwhile. With the demonstration and any success of the pilot project will build interest nationally and provide cities with a model to follow. 

For as long as Covid-19 continues to ravage our country, we must ensure that we are reaching the most vulnerable and isolated communities. To do this we are looking into providing  them with devices with front facing cameras as well as temporary access to the internet. We’ve explored inexpensive tablets and/or buying cellular data for community members in order to overcome this barrier. Ultimately, we are restricted by internet infrastructure in any given location.

We have a long time partnership with Minneapolis City Councilwoman Andrea Jenkins. She is the Councilwoman of Ward 8 in Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed. We have partnered with Andrea Jenkins the last two years to host a community event on the 38th Street Bridge over the 35W freeway that cuts right through Minneapolis. This freeway was built and intentionally separated white neighborhoods in Minneapolis from historically black and very diverse neighborhoods. This community event was designed to bring these communities back together. Based on our working experience with Andrea Jenkins and her office, we will help bring affected community members into conversations with city and county leadership to find solutions and collective healing. 

Our mission is to close gaps across difference through making Intentional Social Interaction (“IZI") the new pattern for society where Indigenous, people of color, the disenfranchised, the poor, the fragile, the LGBTQ+, the traditionally unheard and excluded are actively and intentionally included and valued at the policy-making and resource-sharing table. Our key beneficiaries are the people and communities we serve. 

Although we are a non-profit organization, nearly 70% of our revenue comes directly from someone that hires us. We are mission driven and choose who we work with carefully to ensure that our work will bring meaningful value to the communities we are in. When we are working in a community, we intentionally hire black and brown businesses, as well as youth from marginalized communities. Anywhere from 25%-33% of what we are paid is put directly back into the community through hiring local businesses and individuals. 

Our primary service is our model, Intentional Social Interaction (IZI).This model is designed to bring people together across difference. We are hired by community organizations, foundations, local, county and state governments and corporations to bring people together across difference. We also train organizations and community members in our model so that they can carry on with the work after we are gone. 

Our organization has been sustainable, primarily through our client  work. Nearly 70% of our revenue comes from clients that hire us as opposed to donations or grants. It has been a stable source of revenue and has facilitated our growth as an organization.  We believe that our experience and expertise in our model is needed more than ever and will bring us more opportunities to spread our work, through grants, donations and fee for service. The scope of our project depends on the funding we bring in. If we get more funding, we will expand accordingly, if funding doesn’t keep pace, we can still carry through with the pilot, although on a much smaller scale.

We received a $25,000 grant from the George Family Foundation.

We have currently received a commitment from the Medica Foundation for $25,000 for this project. 

We are currently seeking grant funding from local, regional and national foundations as well as corporations and other donors. We are hoping to build a network of community partnerships to spread out the costs and leverage existing community relationships.

If we get the full funding for this project for the first year, we anticipate the budget being a total of $275,000. 

This amount includes costs for: 

1. Project management,

2. Security (if held in-person, in a public space), 

3. Food and beverage, 

4. Grants to neighborhoods,

5. Paying event workers living wages, 

6. Event support, 

7. Tools and materials, and 

8. Community outreach. 

Right now we lack the funding to elevate our work to the next level. The Elevate Prize will help us raise funds, but most importantly, provide a platform from which we can elevate the profile of this organization and expose other leaders to the important work we do.

In order to maximize our impact and effectiveness, what we most require is collaborative partnership in funding and a peer-to-peer network of storytellers and connections. Our expertise in the latter positions us well to engage meaningfully across platforms and personal networks in order to expand impact in concentric circles, however our model is designed to function best with many collaborators, partners and community members sharing power, expertise and energy to create change. We have worked with national and regional foundations across the United States and we hope to leverage those connections across the nation to deepen relationships and expand impact, while drawing into the center other organizations working locally and regionally to address public safety, community connection and police brutality.