These are the goals and strategies discussed by the Anti-Racism Task Force, some of which were incorporated into the 2021-2025 WSLR+Fogartyville Strategic Plan.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
GOAL #1: Develop stronger connections with all of the diverse neighborhoods and communities that our signal reaches.
STRATEGIES:
- Appoint 2 people to be WSLR+Fogartyville official representatives to the Manasota Anti-Racism Coalition.
- Develop content that gives visibility and a voice to a range of groups that comprise our
- diverse neighborhoods and communities.
- Provide a delivery mechanism for performances of music by various local groups, such as community ensembles and choirs.
- Support the BlPOC community with access to space and resources for independent projects or programs.
- Have Board/staff meet individually with community organizations/local businesses to see how we can support their efforts / make them feel more connected to WSLR+Fogartyville. Make a list of local/regional BIPOC-led or BIPOC-focused organizations to facilitate this process.
- Conduct focus groups to gather listener perspectives and opinions about current and
- prospective services or ideas.
- Conduct a Community Survey in the fall of 2021 to gather more information about who, what and why people listen to/engage with WSLR+Fogartyville and also attempt to reach people that don’t currently listen or engage and find out what we can do to make it more likely that they will engage.
LEADERSHIP AND STAFF
GOAL #2: Expand the diversity of our listening base, staff representation, programmers,Board of Directors, Advisory Council and sponsorship base.
STRATEGIES:
- Prioritize intentional recruitment and hiring practices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) staff, leadership and board members by investing time and/or resources to expand recruitment outside existing networks.
- Establish internal goals of racially diversifying staff and leadership to more closely mirror the diversity in the community.
- Solicit broader representation among community members for the Advisory Council
- Encourage each Board Member to connect with a BIPOC-led organization in the community– attend Board meetings; public events; etc.
- Appoint a BIPOC member to each Board committee that allows community participation.
- Include individuals representing diverse groups in internships or work-study programs designed to provide meaningful professional level experience in order to reflect the diversity of the community and further public broadcasting’s commitment to education.
- Participate in BIPOC or other diversity job fairs, programs and webinars.
- Examine current wage and benefit package and determine how we can do a better job of caring for our employees
- Complete an annual report of the organization’s hiring goals, guidelines, employment statistics, and actions taken to satisfy the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy and post the report on the station’s website.
POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
GOAL #3: Use a participatory approach that includes BIPOC stakeholders to develop policies and procedures that foster an authentic sense of belonging and the inclusion and equality of people regardless of their gender identity, race, color, sexual orientation, language, national origin, religion, disability, or age.
STRATEGIES:
- Conduct a review with the Board of those practices that are designed to fulfill the station’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism.
- Review criteria for Board membership and Board Composition
- Have Board Committees review DEI policies and procedures related to their area of responsibility and recommend suggestions for improvement
- Have Programming Committee review programming handbook and policies
- Develop a crisis management plan regarding racism. There are six major elements in a crisis management plan (CMP). They include identifying a Crisis Response Team (CRT), developing scenarios and incident management checklists, developing relevant policies, including a media policy and social media policy, implementing monitoring tools for all media, esp. social media sites, training all members of the crisis response team, and testing and refining our response. Questions to consider:
- How do we support people in crisis?
- How do we handle racist incidents/microaggressions?
- What do we do if anti-racist organizers are arrested?
- What do we do if white nationalists march in Sarasota?
- What’s our communication plan?
PROGRAMMING
GOAL #4: Foster more diversity in programming and seek to address a broader range of community concerns and interests.
STRATEGIES:
- Solicit broader representation among community members by advertising in Spanish-language or African American media/social media
- Communicate with other radio stations to identify anti-racism training that we can offer programmers
- Expand Content and inclusivity through podcasts – which we can make available through the website/social media and on-air
- Implement a required playbox to get programmers to play music outside their comfort zone – low/medium/high rotation.
- Design and conduct more in-depth listener surveys to gather insight about and further
- understanding into our members and listeners.
- Develop new methods and modes to reach members and listeners.
- Include members of the BIPOC community in the creation of programming and content.
- Drop in pre-recorded segments from community members
- Make PSAs more inclusive
- Improve outreach to community organizations to get information
- Post events in Activist Calendar – programmers can also pull from this source for announcements
- Categorize PSAs into folders to make it easier for programmers to find content they want
- Create a category for time-sensitive PSAs – protests, health, emergency information
CULTURE
GOAL #5: To build a more welcoming, inclusive, anti-racist organization.
Culture relates to the habits we have formed, how we make decisions, how we respond to challenges, pressure and discomfort, and what we believe is good or bad for success based on what we incentivize, reward, reinforce, and possibly even punish in the workplace.
STRATEGIES:
- Incorporate our commitment to being anti-racist and inclusive into our core values
- Continue to model non-hierarchical shared leadership.
- Provide time and resources on an annual basis for board and staff to attend ongoing professional, Black-led antiracism training.
- Build the knowledge and skills of staff and the board of directors through ongoing training, learning, and unlearning activities.
- Have people in positions of leadership attend the Undoing Racism Workshop (already budgeted for 3 people to attend)
- Undertake an analysis of our work, structure, approach and methods to see which factors might be inadvertently contributing to racism, and which could be strengthened to be made anti-racist, then implement those changes.
- Cultivate a deeper understanding of the communities that we serve, and incorporate their perspectives, needs, feedback and priorities into our strategic decisions.
- Commit to the ongoing practice of antiracism as individuals and as an organization by fostering a culture of accountability and receptivity to learning.
- Have official channels to report discrimination, but also think about having different and broader options available for staff. For instance, give people the option to submit anonymous questions to management/Board; have a written policy that includes multiple people staff/programmers can talk to about complaints.
- Give more attention to staff and volunteer appreciation
- Open learning opportunities to all staff and volunteers
- Take time to do a check-in at the beginning of each meeting.
- Use gender pronouns to foster a more welcoming, inclusive community
- Collect data that will help us monitor our progress towards becoming a more anti-racist, inclusive organization.
- Create a baseline for data collection this year
- Track diversity of Fogartyville programming
- Track diversity of WSLR on-air programming – both in terms of hosts and genres represented on-air
- Track and publish race representation statistics related to our workforce, consultants, and vendors.
- Administer an employee satisfaction survey annually that is disaggregated by race and gender.