BIG News from Mapping Prejudice
|
|
Ramsey County Surpasses Expectations
We are thrilled to announce that our volunteers finished reading through the property records for Ramsey County. This is a major watershed for Mapping Prejudice. The past year brought a series of interlocking crises. One of the ways that you responded to the pandemic, racial violence, and political unrest was to answer our call to make history. Our team is now working to transform the data you created into compelling visualizations. In the weeks to come, please join us to reflect on the meaning of this data. We also invite you to check out this guide as you think about how to confront systemic racism.
You can read more about Mapping Prejudice’s work in Ramsey County here.
|
|
Mapping Prejudice Goes to Washington
Community transcription sessions are central to Mapping Prejudice. These sessions do more than create data points; they provide a transformational space that brings people together to contemplate collective anti-racist action. We are grateful that in the midst of a global pandemic and the wake of George Floyd’s murder, our virtual community sessions provided a digital space for people to connect and contribute to a project addressing racial equity.
As the project moves forward and evolves, we have the privilege of offering our expertise to other geographies and communities interested in mapping covenants. The weekly digital transcription session that we developed in response to the pandemic, now has the potential to grow into an important community-building space binding people together across the country. Mapping Prejudice is beginning to help communities outside of Minnesota use our methodology to map racial covenants. Our weekly sessions will continue. We envision them remaining a space for co-creation and antiracist community building. People who contribute to this co-creative mapping process will have the chance to learn the history and how to read these primary sources while engaging with one another.
Mapping Prejudice launched this new phase of work on February 10th, when we hosted our first session in partnership with Prologue DC. Below you can read more about Prologue DC’s project, Mapping Segregation, in a blog written by co-directors, Mara Cherkasky and Sarah Shoenfeld.
To register and participate in one of our upcoming sessions, see the information provided below, or check out our events page.
|
|
Mapping Segregation in Washington DC
Mapping Prejudice recently began partnering with Mapping Segregation in Washington DC to review a sample of DC deeds using Zooniverse. The collaboration actually goes back to 2017, when Mapping Segregation received a grant from the National Park Service and teamed up with Mapping Prejudice’s Kevin Ehrman-Solberg to map DC data. Thus far, Mapping Segregation has documented and mapped more than 20,000 covenants. You can read more about the partnership and their work here.
|
|
Just Deeds Website Launched
A coalition of community stakeholders came together in the summer of 2020 to address the history of systemic racism in housing in Minnesota. The result was Just Deeds. Founded in collaboration with Mapping Prejudice, Just Deeds is working to educate policymakers and professionals about the legacies of discriminatory practices like racial covenants. Its members are also committed to helping people navigate the process of discharging covenants -- a process made possible by a new law in Minnesota. Check out their new website to learn more and connect with these efforts.
|
|
Minnesota Researcher Contributes to Reparations Work in Vermont
This past summer the city of Burlington, Vermont created a task force dedicated to researching and proposing possible reparations for the descendants of slaves. To help with this effort the city of Burlington selected Rashad Williams to co-lead a study on anti-Black racism in Vermont. Rashad Williams is a PhD candidate in Public Affairs at the Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota. He has written on “reparative planning”, and plans to use Mapping Prejudice’s methodology in Burlington to engage the community in reparation work. Williams’ work in Burlington demonstrates how Mapping Prejudice’s work can be used to contribute to national conversations on reparations.
|
|
Mapping Prejudice Honored with Finnegan Award
The Minnesota Coalition on Government Information (MNCOGI) has recognized the Hennepin County Recorder’s office in partnership with Mapping Prejudice with its 2021 John R. Finnegan Freedom of Information (FOI) Award. While the award acknowledges the work Mapping Prejudice has done to make their work available and accessible to all, it is important to note that the work of this project would not be possible without the support of the Hennepin County Recorder’s Office. Co-founder Kirsten Delegard put it best: “Hennepin County recorder staff are heroes who have played a critical role in allowing us to create a new co-creative mapping process that is helping people all over the country understand structural racism and the history of housing discrimination in the United States. Their dedication to open records and public access has been exemplary.”
|
|
A Reckoning with Structural Racism in the Twin Cities: March 18th
Friends of the Library is hosting a virtual event centered on the work Mapping Prejudice is doing to confront the legacies of racial covenants in this moment of national reckoning. Join Kirsten Delegard (Mapping Prejudice co-founder), Maria Cisneros (founder of the Just Deeds Project), and Rose McGee (creator of Sweet Potato Comfort Pie) as they discuss the consequences discriminatory housing practices, and how the community can get involved. To register sign-up here.
|
|
Community Reflection Event: Ramsey County
We are thrilled to announce that our volunteers finished reading through the property records for Ramsey County! If you transcribed deeds for Ramsey County, or if you live in Ramsey County we invite you to participate in the next phase too. As we ramp up our data processing and mapping efforts, we are hosting community processing sessions. These sessions will be a chance to reflect on what we collectively learned transcribing Ramsey. We will reveal our preliminary covenant map and historical research by our “Welcoming the Dear Neighbor?” partners! The sessions will also include time for Q&A and community conversation. To register for our March 12th reflection event, click here, or check out our upcoming events page for a session that fits your schedule.
Find links to register for all of our upcoming events on our website.
|
|
The Work Continues
Please join us for our first set of nationally focused volunteer sessions identifying racial covenants in Washington D.C.. You’ll join our team alongside members of Prologue D.C. in a collaborative online space to continue the work that we started in Hennepin County. Register for one of these events and then spend an hour learning from project leaders about how you can contribute to this important effort.
|
|
Mapping Prejudice by the Numbers
|
|
|
248,020 deed classifications later, we are finished transcribing Ramsey County! Check out the numbers below to track our progress in Washington DC.
|
|
|
Our volunteers are incredible! We are transcribing hundreds of deeds each day. So far we have completed more than 3,420 of 11,070 deed transcriptions necessary to map covenants in Washington DC. This means we are 31% complete! If our 5,959 rockstar volunteers continue working at their current pace, we will finish Washington DC transcriptions in 34 days!
|
|
|
Top Volunteers!
Above are the rankings of our top volunteers over the past 30 days and the transcriptions they have completed. Check back next month to see who’s on top!
|
|
Outreach and Community Engagement
|
|
|
GEOFEST
Junior League of St. Paul
Wells Fargo
Carmichael Lynch Advertising Agency
Veterans Administration Research Group
Wisconsin Land Association Information
|
|
|
|
