As part of our ongoing series One Square Mile: Westerly, candidates Kevin Lowther and Leslie Dunn spoke with South County Bureau Reporter Alex Nunes. Kevin Lowther began by saying he became inspired to run for town council after watching a candidate forum last election.
Listen to the interview or read the transcript below.
KEVIN LOWTHER: I just was not being represented. When they asked questions about “Is there systemic racism in Westerly?” or “Should Juneteenth be a state holiday?” I just saw that there were just a lot of candidates who had really not had to consider that perspective, the perspective of some percentage of their constituents. And I think from that moment on, I knew there might be a space for someone like me.
ALEX NUNES: And what about you, Leslie?
LESLIE DUNN: So I had the pleasure of starting to get myself more involved in attending town council meetings, school committee meetings, and just really being invited into spaces to hear more about what was going on in the town. Something that stuck out to me at a town council meeting was we kept talking about diversity and multiculturalism and the lack of representation. And everybody’s response was always, “Well, we want everybody; we want to be diverse; we want to be inclusive.” But nobody’s showing up. So to me, because I’m a stubborn person, I took that as an invitation of like: Alright, I’m gonna start showing up. And I said: If you’re going to speak out, and you’re going to talk about injustices, and you’re going to talk about inequality, and you’re going to become an advocate, you have to put yourself out there and be willing to take the next steps to say: I can write a letter; I can stand up at a town meeting; I can stand up at a school committee meeting; I can stand out in public places. But you have to be willing to put yourself into that space where you can really impact change and be a part of the decision-making that moves our community forward.
ALEX NUNES: Can you give people a sense of what it’s like being a person of color in this community?
LESLIE DUNN: It’s something that, in general, there’s always been a statement of “Things are done in the Westerly way.” And one of the things that’s a challenge already coming into this community is a lot of things are name recognition, and what families people are a part of. And there’s already a little bit of a barrier to accept anybody who’s new. So then to add on top of that being a person of color, and somebody who doesn’t look like the majority of this community, it’s a struggle to feel accepted. And it’s a struggle to feel like you’re not being tokenized, or just invited in to fill a quota for something. And there aren’t a lot of people who understand what you’re going through. So a lot of times people in this community, they do find the few people who do identify with them, and they become almost subcommunities. And they have to kind of exist in that world and make sure they’re helping each other, and sharing resources, and doing all of that work on their own. And then still trying to figure out: How do I fit into this community? What stores and businesses are, in a sense, friendly to people who look like me? And what are some spaces that I shouldn’t be in, because there’s going to be some unfriendly faces, and there’s going to be some comments made?
ALEX NUNES: What’s the response been like from people in the community to your candidacies?
LESLIE DUNN: I have to say, so far, it’s been extremely positive. There are a few naysayers out there. But I’ve kind of taken an approach of: I want to focus on the positive pieces of this and the learning aspect of it, and worry about the negative stuff another day.
ALEX NUNES: For both of you, what would you say are the most important issues for you right now?
KEVIN LOWTHER: My top three: Number one is affordable housing. The affordable housing crisis that we have in this country and in this town is really leading us to a real demographic shift in this town to an aging community. We’re losing our school age population. We’re losing our families. And that is not a recipe for an economically vibrant Westerly in the future. We need to attract more young people, more families, and we need to give them a place to live. Number two is just governance, good governance in general on the council. We have to understand that our ideologies, our individual ideologies, cannot get in the way of the business being done and accomplished for the people of Westerly, because there are a few in this town who are trying to throw wrenches in the process. We give them their say, but we don’t let them overtake the process. And then the third thing is we have to value equity in this community in all kinds of ways, which means engaging all kinds of different ethnicities, all kinds of different people in the process who have not been a part of this process in the past. We have a big Asian community; we have a growing Hispanic community; we have a hidden Native community–people who are disenfranchised in the process. And there is a cost to that to the community. Because we haven’t engaged these communities the way that we should, and so we don’t have the votes to get things accomplished that we need to do.
LESLIE DUNN: So for me, a big one is looking into equity in our schools. And equity crosses so many things. It not only just looks at race as something to gauge where we are and what we need to be doing to be more inclusive, but it also looks at financial disparities among our community, what resources are available. So an equity audit would just really kind of peel everything back, and especially if it’s done by a third party company. It really takes a scientific look at where this community can do better to make sure our students, across the board, are getting what they need.
ALEX NUNES: So I have heard some people say they feel like, when they see people protesting or hear people kind of taking a critical eye to the town or town government, that that’s divisive. And that’s something that they think isn’t helpful. How would you respond to someone who says something like that?
LESLIE DUNN: When something’s not your experience, it’s easier to say that it’s divisive, and that it’s not helpful. But it’s probably one of our best indicators of what’s actually going on. I don’t need people to come and hold a sign up for me. I don’t need people to sympathize with me, but I need people to empathize, and to understand that it’s very real, it’s very current, and there’s a legitimate barrier to being a person of color that’s in this town.
KEVIN LOWTHER: There are people who are opposing our candidacy, saying that we’re puppets of the BLM organization, and that’s all we are. It’s unhelpful. It doesn’t help people talk about issues. It doesn’t help people understand who we are as individuals and the kinds of skills and relationships that we might bring to the job. It doesn’t do anything except for rile up people’s sensibilities, because they think that they hate this organization so much. We just want to be people, we want to be real, and we want to have real conversations.
ALEX NUNES: Kevin Lowther and Leslie Dunn, candidates for Westerly Town Council and School Committee, thanks very much for speaking with me.
KEVIN LOWTHER: Thanks for having us.
LESLIE DUNN: Thank you so much. It was great.
Alex Nunes can be reached at anunes@thepublicsradio.org
