About GAP AVL
In order to effectively advocate local government to move toward racial justice, advocacy groups and the general public need timely information regarding policy decisions, across a range of issue areas, currently being considered by both City and County governments. The Government Accountability Project (GAP) will regularly gather information from public meetings and other sources, as well as through direct relationship building with people inside government. This information will then be analyzed by our Strategy Team, made up of local community thought leaders, in order to distill what is most relevant to racial justice. This distillation of the most urgent matters making their way through the political process will be shared with the public, enabling more timely and effective advocacy.
About the Strategy Team
Tiffany Flunory-De’Bellott, originally from Brooklyn, NY, moved to Asheville NC in 1997. Since then, Tiffany and her two daughters have been active in education advocacy and community organizing. Tiffany has a Bachelors of Arts in Psychology and various restorative practice, trauma informed, and resilience training. Throughout the years, Tiffany’s focus has been on diversity, equity, and inclusion work: Facilitating racial equity circles, hosting Parent Forums, Building Bridges, Ashville’s Black Caucus, and other grassroots movements. Tiffany has been instrumental with leveraging vital resources for Black and Brown communities, strategically becoming a board member of Green Opportunities, SouthSide Community Advisory board, Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, Asheville Writers in Schools, Streets, and Community, Asheville Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, etc… Currently, Tiffany is a member of the Human Relations Commission of Asheville, YMI Cultural Center board member, COTTHINK, and most recently a new board member of LEAF Global. “It is my passion to ensure a better future for our children, through holding accountable and challenging systems of oppression, racism, and superiority”.
Rev. Tami Forte Logan is a seminarian and scholar of HBCU-Hood Theological Seminary and the Equity Missioner of Faith 4 Justice Asheville – “faith leaders in the Asheville region provoking justice for and with Black and Brown bodied people through faith and racial equity work.” Tami has facilitated racial equity, strategic planning, and grassroots leadership support organizing, built organizational capacity, and advocated for racial and economic justice throughout Western North Carolina for over twenty years. Since 2009, Tami has focused her efforts in Asheville to support Black-led movements that divest from white supremacy culture, collectively build equitable infrastructures in education, nonprofit, church and government systems. Tami is also committed to healing historical grief and trauma through truth-telling, repentance, public witness, and Afrofuturism.
Keith Young was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the historically black Virginia State University. He also studied Implementing Public Policy at Harvard. Young returned to Asheville in 2003 and focused on community organizing in low-income communities. He is a former city council member in Asheville from 2015-2020 and was the architect of the city’s reparations legislation along with other equitable policies. Keith also played a key role, and was instrumental, in the recent resolution passed in Tulsa, Oklahoma where the city formally apologized for the first time regarding the events of the 1921 race massacre and subsequent policies that negatively impacted the black community. The resolution looks to become the base to build a reparations program for the recompense of the 1921 race massacre. Young is also author of the book, 12 Powers of Influence, and a member of Harvard Kennedy School’s Implementing Public Policy Community of Practice.