[Noozhawk’s note: First in a series sponsored by the Hutton Parker Foundation.]
It was May 2020, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the start of a mass racial reckoning.
While many people across the country grieved at the injustice of George Floyd’s murder, Krystle Farmer Sieghart, Leticia Forney Resch and Simone Akila Ruskamp sat in their Santa Barbara homes, mourning, but also moved to action.
“We knew that black people were grieving and questioning what that moment meant and specifically how we could talk about it as a local community,” said Sieghart, a grassroots activist and co-founder of Healing Justice Santa Barbara.
Sieghart, who has committed her career to amplifying marginalized voices, joined forces with Ruskamp, a fellow activist and social worker, and a co-founder of Healing Justice and Juneteenth Santa Barbara.
To help facilitate online healing circles, the women leveraged Juneteenth’s established network of black allies, using the nonprofit organization’s Instagram page as a platform to promote the gatherings.
More than 50 people showed up for the first Zoom meeting and more healing circles followed, which is when Resch, a local events planner and cultural arts organizer, got involved.
It was also decided in those initial meetings that the group would protest, just as many were doing across the country, but their demonstration would be with purpose.
“We felt called, in this moment, to specifically name the needs of black people in this community,” Sieghart explained.
This was the early inception of Healing Justice Santa Barbara, which aspires to uplift all black/African-American community members, who comprise just 1.6% of Santa Barbara County, to affirm that they are deserving of safety, love, equity, respect and joy.
The protest they staged was organized, strategic and intentional, with a focus on local issues.
A list of six demands was shared with city and county officials, including institutional support for annual Juneteenth celebrations, protection and preservation of black landmarks, and transparency and accountability from the Santa Barbara Police and Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s departments.
All of those demands were eventually met.
“We came together as passionate activists, black mothers and friends, who wanted to be seen and were not feeling seen,” Sieghart said.
“That commonality united us, not even realizing what we would become together and create in this community.”
In fact, the three women stayed committed to their cause, despite pregnancies, outside careers, demands of mothering and relocations (Ruskamp to Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Sieghart to Germany for her husband’s job).
“I think this really speaks to the heart of who we are,” Sieghart said. “We remained committed to doing what we said we were going to do.
“Even when we were not all physically together, we remained resolute in our pledge to this community.”
The reasons behind this commitment are personal.
“First and foremost, we do this work for the love of black people,” said Ruskamp, whose allegiance to Santa Barbara stems from her years as an undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, where she often felt invisible and isolated, even in spaces that were intended for people of color.
She also spent years working in local nonprofit organizations, caring for various underserved communities.
For Resch and Sieghart, Santa Barbara natives, the roots run deep.
Resch is a fourth-generation Santa Barbaran who said she has seen firsthand the attempted erasure of the black and brown community from local history.
“This is not just a place we get to live and raise our families,” she told Noozhawk. “We are stakeholders with generations of our family dating back to the early 1900s.
“Krystle’s great aunt had one of the largest black weddings in Santa Barbara and my great-great-grandparents had the first in the Second Baptist Church.”
In her search for historical documents, Sieghart unearthed a photo of her great-great-grandmother pictured with Resch’s great-grandmother.
It was a full circle moment for the women to see their grandmothers seated together affirming their belief that they were destined to advance the work that their ancestors started.
The Santa Barbara Foundation helped Healing Justice advance that work, assuming fiscal responsibility for several years, with the assistance of many volunteers working pro bono.
It is now an independent 501(c)(3) charitable organization, that continues to progress its initiatives chronicling and celebrating Santa Barbara’s black heritage and history.
Click here for more information about Healing Justice Santa Barbara, and click here to make an online donation.
