Accountability
Accountability can be confusing. Many people associate it with blame and shame, finding faults and enforcing consequences. If we are looking to create a Washington for All, it cannot be through shutting people down and prevent growth.
What if we viewed accountability differently? Instead of assigning blame, we could see it as a chance to grow. It is the difference between: “You messed up, and now you’ll pay the price,” versus, “Let’s figure out what happened here and how we can move forward.”
Accountability means:
- Keeping our promises
- Understanding how our decisions affect people
- Building relationships and creating change
- Continuous Improvement
- Serving community
Accountability starts and ends with truth. Each person must make daily choices to practice equity and fight injustice. We can look clearly at the world around us and tell the story, no matter how messy or unflattering it is. This is how we make sure our organizations do the same. We can't have organizational accountability without personal accountability.
How We Practice Accountability
At the Office of Equity, we follow these principles:
Transparency
We are honest about past and current harm. This helps us find and understand the systemic problems that stop people from getting what they need to live and thrive.
Commitment
We identify the harm and work with communities to create strategies for our goals. We commit to doing our part to address harm and be accountable to the communities that have been hurt most by unfair systems.
Action
We take action to repair harm and build systems that prevent it from happening again.
Reflection
We regularly look at our progress and impact. We constantly ask if our work is helping us reach our goals. If we find that our actions have caused or continued harm, we admit our mistakes and change our approach to keep working toward equity and justice for all.
