August 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 45

ty gardens, farmers markets, and
farm-to-table or community supported agriculture (CSA) cooperatives. Greater opportunities exist
to convert parkland to urban farms,
community orchards, and sites for
training programs for sustainable
food supply and green infrastructure management.

Social Justice and
Racial Equality

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed fault lines of inequality in our
society. Disparities in healthcare, social services, public safety, and yes,
even in parks and recreation, that
were largely under the radar have
been laid bare and are all the more
painful for their sudden prominence.
" Low-income families have been
hit the hardest, " says Kelly about
the impacts of the pandemic. " It
has been very clear that minorities
have been disproportionately affected. We see greater rates of infection, more hospitalizations and
more deaths in African American
communities. This is why we as a
city have to invest greater amounts
in those communities that have
been most affected. We must make
the kinds of investments in parks

and recreation facilities that will
help the families of these communities in our city. If this isn't a wakeup call, I don't know what is. "
As reported by the PEW Charitable Trust citing multiple public
health studies, there is growing proof
that racism is a public health emergency, and more than 20 cities and
four states have now passed resolutions declaring racism a public health
emergency. The disproportionate
impacts of COVID-19 on Black,
Latino and Indigenous U.S. residents
with up to four times the number of
infections than non-Hispanic white
persons, have been shocking.
Detrick Stanford, former park
and recreation director and now
chief operating officer of Clayton
County, Georgia, says that the
Black Lives Matter movement and
the growing awareness of racial injustice will have a profound effect
on parks and recreation. " How
parks and recreation delivers services to the community will forever
change. " The overriding message
of the Black Lives Matter movement is inequality, he says. And because parks and recreation is on the
front lines of societal change, we
must also be at the forefront of ad-

dressing social and racial inequalities. " If we are fighting health inequalities, we are fighting racism, "
he says about the grave inequities
in healthcare, access to good nutrition and environmental pollution
that black communities encounter.
" Addressing health disparities involves a range of social, economic
and health factors, " Stanford says.
" Parks and recreation [has] real
solutions for addressing public
health outcomes. We have great resilience in our country, but we must
provide the context to why things
must change and then be courageous enough to make the changes
we need to make. We can do this. "
Will parks and recreation change
forever? As far as a return to normal, Kelly says, " I think Americans
are incredibly resilient. There will
be a return to normal someday. "
But the next normal may be so far
down the road that it will not ever
feel like the old normal again.
Thanks to Allison Colman, director of
health at NRPA, for contributing to
this article.
Richard J. Dolesh is an Editor at Large for Parks
& Recreation magazine (dolesh@gmail.com).

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August 2020 - Parks & Recreation

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