Cincinnati, like other US cities, lives with a legacy of systemic racism and classism that has governed the spaces in which we exist. Whole communities have been shut out of our city’s economic success. Discriminatory lending, predatory real estate practices, systematic disinvestment, biased criminalization, social exclusion, and reckless displacement have done, and continue to do, violence to our neighbors with limited economic resources and to our neighbors of color. The deep inequalities across our zip codes were created by design, and they must be righted by design.

Cincinnati will never thrive unless our public policies and practices prioritize our most marginalized residents. To wait for resources to trickle down from the most powerful is neither a real nor a just solution. Lives are threatened every day by our resistance to change. If we allow our City to continue to ignore or delay smart reforms, we will prolong the morally inexcusable inequalities seen in income, wealth, employment, infant mortality, education, life expectancy, health care, and incarceration.

There is ample research to support this platform; no additional data are needed to put any of these pieces in motion. If we are serious about building a fair and inclusive city to call home, we need to rally behind a shared vision with specific and achievable goals, and we need to collectively demand that it moves to the forefront of Cincinnati's policy plans and action. This platform offers us an opportunity to do it!