Sacramento has an equity problem. How we address it together will be part of Stephon Clark’s legacy

The police shooting of Stephon Clark revealed to a lot of us what residents of Meadowview, Del Paso Heights, Valley Hi and other neighborhoods had already known for years: Sacramento has an equity problem.

At The Sacramento Bee, we believe we can be a stronger community and a stronger news organization by working together on inequity.

In that spirit, we have released a groundbreaking documentary produced by Bee journalist Alyssa Hodenfield. It is titled “S.A.C.” Those were Clark’s initials and, as his brother Stevante points out, it’s also the abbreviation for the city where Clark lived and died.

The film is about more than that night in the winter of 2018 when Clark, an unarmed black man, was shot and killed by Sacramento police officers in his grandmother’s backyard. It is about Clark’s legacy and it raises questions about whether Sacramento is up to the challenge of facing — and fixing — the broader issues that his death raised.

How do we ensure all of Sacramento’s neighborhoods get the resources they deserve?

What can we do as a community to make sure no one is left behind by the Sacramento region’s renaissance?

And can we get to a point where all residents — regardless of skin color, income level or address — feel they are being treated fairly by police, media, our elected leaders and others in positions of power?

At The Bee, we are working every day to elevate the voices of the communities where inequities are most severe. We’ve released “S.A.C.” free to all readers on our website and our YouTube channel. You don’t need to subscribe to view it.

In the days, weeks and months ahead, we will also publish stories, videos and poems by emerging writers from communities in the Sacramento region that are traditionally underserved by the media. It is not our aim to give a voice to these neighborhoods. They have a voice. We can elevate those voices to the hundreds of thousands of people who read The Bee every month.

This effort is not ours alone. Working with Sol Collective — a nonprofit organization with deep roots in our city that works for social justice and equity — we are seeking new voices to tell their stories. The thoughts expressed in the articles will be those of individual writers and will not necessarily reflect those of Sol Collective. This partnership is just beginning and we look forward to our Community to Newsroom Pipeline workshops hosted at the Sol Collective arts and cultural center in 2020.

In the meantime, do you have a story idea? Can you suggest collaborators? Is your community facing a challenge that needs to be highlighted? Please, let us know by emailing me at rlillis@sacbee.com.

We understand earning the trust of all of Sacramento’s neighborhoods will take time. It won’t happen in one day, or with one documentary or story. But we are here for this long-term commitment.

In the end, we’ll all be the better for it.

Your subscription to The Sacramento Bee helps fund groundbreaking work such as the “S.A.C.” documentary. It also supports the deep, impactful journalism that you won’t see anywhere else in the Sacramento region. Thank you for your continued support of our essential work.

And if you don’t already subscribe to The Bee, support local journalism by purchasing a digital subscription here. Thanks for your support.

This story was originally published December 16, 2019 at 7:00 AM.