Ayla Tulette, WCGL Staff Member
Lansing, Michigan thrives as a hub of leadership and community engagement, filled with folks and organizations uniting in their shared mission of community empowerment and support. Down almost any main street you will find countless
organizations dedicated to serving the underserved and creating the better future we all dream of. We are here to shine a spotlight on 3 of our amazing local leaders and their impact within our Lansing community.
Our first spotlight is on Angela Waters Austin, the founder, president, and CEO of the 501c3 nonprofit One Love Global. Angela created One Love Global in January 2004, with the organizational mission to “transform communities so Black Children experience justice, peace, healing, opportunity, and abundance.” One Love Global supports the Lansing community through youth action programs, NEON and My Brother’s Keeper and Girl’s Equity Network, the Lansing People’s Assembly, voter engagement, and healing justice through their Truth Racial Healing & Transformation circles. Angela’s community engagement doesn’t just stop at One Love Global, she is also the founder, producer, and host of the Equality Equals radio show where she promotes fellow Michigan-based leaders. She has also received many awards and recognitions, from Zeta Phi Beta Greater Lansing Chapter’s 2012 Woman of the Year to receiving the 2015 Greater Lansing Area Club of the National Association of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc. Award for Business Excellence. Today, through One Love Global, Angela serves as the point of contact for the White House My Brother’s Keeper Challenge and convener of Mayor’s Young Lansing MBK.
Our next spotlight is on Dana Watson, East Lansing City Councilmember & Health Equity and Social Justice Coordinator at the Ingham County Health Department. Appointed in 2020, she is the 2nd Black woman to have ever served on the East
Lansing City Council. Dana is a staunch voice for the Black community, and has taken it upon herself to bring inclusion, representation, and equity to the attention of the city council. She discusses her experience on the EL City Council this past April in the Spartan NewsRoom interview titled “Breaking barriers: Dana Watson’s journey as the second Black woman on East Lansing City Council”. Dana is also involved with multiple boards and commissions, including the Police Oversight Commission, Housing Commission, and Capital Area Michigan Works. Dana has shared more about her priorities with housing affordability, police oversight, and sustainability as well as pushback she has received in her councilmember role in the WKAR interview “Dana Watson reflects on “sense of belonging” on East Lansing City Council”. As the Health Equity and Social Justice Coordinator at the Ingham County Health Department, Dana holds the department accountable, knowing that inequities stem from historical factors and explicit and implicit biases. Dana has developed multiple trainings from implicit bias to presenting on the Racial Justice Competency Model. Through her training, Dana generously shares her emotional labor and calls in attendees to reflect upon concepts of social justice, racism, homophobia, etc. that they were previously unaware of or unwilling to unpack.
Last but not least, our final spotlight is on Tashmica Torok, founder and Co-Director of the Firecracker Foundation, which provides child survivors of sexual trauma and their families mental health therapy, support groups, and more. Tashmica pulled the inspiration for the foundation from her own experience as a survivor of CSA, hoping to create a system of healing-centered interventions to prevent the violence she endured from continuing for our community’s youngest minds. An avid abolitionist, Tashmica has collaborated on projects like the Transformative Justice Parent Network and the Reimagining Transformative Community Services Project, in hopes of calling in white-led organizations and advocates within the domestic violence/sexual violence institutional movement to reflect upon and dismantle their complicity with systemic inequities created by institutional neglect. While Tashmica is currently focusing her efforts on the local level, she has also spent time on several local, state, and national committees and boards such as the Survivor Strong Board of Directors, the Child Abuse Prevention Local Council, and the MSU SANE Advisory Committee. She is also the Co-Host and Executive Producer of the transformative-justice and pop culture blend podcast, Popaganada. Tashmica’s impact is deeply inspired by her vision of creating a community free of acts of violence without relying on police or the prison industrial complex.
While the list of impactful Lansing local leaders could go on and on, these 3 wonderful people are absolutely worth knowing about. They are a great reminder of how important it is to maintain hope and recognize that there are so many of us out here dedicated to a bigger, brighter, and beautiful future. Our fight for equity and justice will and must continue, but together our impact will be fueled by camaraderie and more sustainable than ever before.