The Fife City Council wrestled with racism. It was painful, but may be productive.
Dee-Dee Gethers couldn’t sleep.
That’s unusual for her, the Fife City Council member explained this week, but so was what brought on her temporary bout of insomnia.
Like a number of cities across the country, Fife issued a statement in response to the current social justice movement — inspired by the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.
Unlike some of those statements, however, the words the city put out in early June, according to Gethers, were vague and feckless, failing to get at the root of the matter.
“It really weighed on me. It was so heavy on my heart,” she explained.
“I thought the statement needed to say more. It didn’t even say George Floyd’s name,” Gethers continued. “It didn’t say, ‘We’re going to stand with our Black and brown residents.’ … I just felt like the five or six sentences we put out wasn’t enough.”
While it’s likely safe to assume that few closely follow the proceedings of the Fife City Council, what has transpired since are scenes we all should see.
Led by Gethers’ drive to say more — articulated in a statement she wrote and asked her colleagues to vote in support of during a June 16 meeting — Fife’s seven-member elected body embarked on a discussion that closely mirrors the one we’re having as a society.
The conversation was frank, painful and at times awkward — as Fife’s predominantly white council wrestled with our current moment in history. It included moments of ignorance about the very real issues Black Americans face, and the color-blind defiance that so often accompanies it.
Importantly, and unlike the first statement, Gethers’ included George Floyd’s name. It also included the names of 15 other Black Americans, all of them now dead — from Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and Michael Brown to Tacoma’s Manuel Ellis.
The statement also deliberately stated that Fife stands “with our black and brown residents against systemic and institutionalized racism, and will work with ALL to disassemble the ugly outcomes racism has plagued within our country.”
According to Bryan Yambe, a 34-year-old Japanese American who has served on the Fife City Council since 2013, Gethers’ words were timely and important.
During World War II, Yambe said his family was “rounded up and sent to U.S. concentration camps,” describing it as an experience that has shaped his view on why statements like Gethers’ are powerful and necessary.
“If there were more people in government who looked like us or were willing to stand up for those injustices, perhaps there would have been a different outcome,” Yambe said of the racism his family faced during WWII.
“We know too often what happens when good people stay silent, especially those who hold elected positions,” he continued. “There were some good people who stood up for our community, but so many didn’t.”
Gethers acknowledged that the discussion surrounding her statement was painful, leaving her “disappointed, hurt and quite honestly shocked” at various times.
As the only African American on the council, it could also be argued that the weight of bringing these issues to the forefront shouldn’t have fallen on her.
Gethers, however, said she doesn’t see it that way.
In her view, she was simply doing what needed to be done.
“It was very difficult, but it had to be said,” Gethers explained.
‘Taking sides’
The conversation was hard on Fife City Councilmember Doug Fagundes, too — for much different reasons.
Serving his first term on the Fife City Council, Fagundes is a 58-year-old white man who has lived in the city for more than two decades. Previously, he spent more than a decade serving on the Fife school board.
Fagundes was also one of several council members who took issue with Gethers’ statement on June 16.
Prefacing his comments with fears that his views would be misconstrued or wouldn’t matter, Fagundes told his colleagues that he was afraid using the word “dissemble,” because it might lead people to believe the city was talking about its police force.
Fagundes’ broader point, however, was that he thought Gethers’ statement had the potential to be divisive.
As he later told The News Tribune, Fagundes believed Gethers’ words “felt more like separation instead of bringing inclusion.”
“It felt like it was really taking sides, and I just feel like it’s a time when we need to figure out how to come together, however that looks,” Fagundes explained this week. “It’s not saying, ‘Hey, let’s’ have a conversation.’ It’s just saying one thing to one particular group of people, is the way I read it.”
“That’s the way I perceived it,” Fagundes said.
‘Only a starting point’
There’s no immediate, tidy bow to tie on this story — just like there will be no quick and easy fix for ending the racism faced by Black and brown people in America.
Like so many of us, Fife’s City Council emerged from its June 16 conversation about racism as frustratingly divided as when it began.
Gethers’ statement was approved by a slim 4-3 vote, and has since been shared on the city’s social media channels.
Fagundes represented one of the three votes in opposition, all of them cast by white men.
That’s not the end of the story, though — or at least it doesn’t have to be.
Reached this week, Fagundes spoke of how the conversation Gethers initiated impacted him.
He described the experience as “very uncomfortable,” but added that conversations like these “need to happen, and need to continue to happen.”
Fagundes also said he’d spent the days since voting against Gethers’ statement trying to educate himself, calling the ongoing process “very enlightening, to say the least.”
“The biggest thing I can say is that I never really consciously have taken a good look at our past,” Fagundes acknowledged. “When I start looking into this, it is eye-opening and definitely has changed my perspective.”
If he had to do it all over again, Fugundes said he would change his vote.
“Knowing what I know now, since last week, I would vote to support the letter,” Fagundes said, adding that he now has a better understanding of the “meaning behind it.”
Gethers said “opening up someone’s mind” was part of the point. She said Fagundes has reached out to her since the vote, and she appreciates him “taking the initiative to talk to people.”
She also described all of this as only a starting point.
Ultimately, for Fugundes, the city of Fife and anyone else who has gained a greater understanding of the racism Black and brown Americans face in this country, it will be about what comes next, Gethers said.
“It was a very constructive conversation. I can’t say it was productive as of yet, because I don’t want it to stop there,” she said.
“It’s only productive if changes are made.”
This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 3:00 AM.
