BROWN COUNTY, Wis. (NBC 26) -- George Floyd's death sparked a battle for change around Northeast Wisconsin. And it's a fight local leaders hope to continue.
RELATED STORIES
- Brown Co. Racial Equity Ad Hoc Committee holds 1st meeting, targets local education against racism
- One year following George Floyd's Death, woman says the pain is still very real for Green Bay's African American community
- Reflecting on a year of protests sparked by George Floyd's murder
"This particular incident of George Floyd has given a sense of urgency," Dr. Pooja Bambha-Arora said.
And it’s a sense of urgency Bambha-Arora has felt every day for the past year.
"One big thing that we are addressing after this George Floyd incident is systemic racism and how it's so deeply institutionalized," she said.
Bambha-Arora is the chair of Brown County's Racial Equity Committee, which formed in 2021 to address racism as a public health crisis.
"Especially in Wisconsin, we're way behind in terms of giving that lens of equity to people," Bambha-Arora said on the one year anniversary of the event in Minneapolis.
The local racial justice advocate says the death of George Floyd revitalized a fight for equity in Northeast Wisconsin.
"There is a lot of bias when it comes to hiring decisions in the [Brown] county, when you think of unemployment, when you think of educational access," Bambha-Arora said.
In April, Vice-Chairperson Susan Kohout and other supervisors passed a resolution that advocates for a vision of diversity, equity and inclusion within Door County.
"The videos that we have seen in the past year have been breathtaking frankly," Kohout, the District 6 Door Co. board supervisor, said. "It's pretty hard to look away and not know that something is amiss."
Still, Kohout says some members of the community don't see a need for social reform.
"There was a fair amount of disgruntlement, anger even, about what is our place in this and why should a county be looking at this?" she said.
Though Door County's resolution aims to make the area more inclusive, Kohout says Northeast Wisconsin is a long way from its goal.
"It isn't the paper that matters," Kohout said. "It's what we do now that matters."
