PADUCAH, Ky. (WSIL) -- Inspired by last year's marches and protests, former Paducah Mayor, Brandi Harless, co-hosted virtual Community Conversations to discuss racial disparities in the area.
Those Community Conversations have recently been published into an online report, documenting weeks of feedback Harless discovered from those meetings.
Harless says she was inspired by the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor incidents and began hosting nightly virtual conversations with nearly 100
participants to discuss experiences of racial division in the area.
She says their backgrounds ranged from local political figures and teachers to those young and old.
Harless says what stood out the most to her was that while there's a lot of diversity in the city there's not as much in various positions of leadership and hopes this report can be a tool to resolve some of those issues.
"That's my goal is to get it in front of as many people as possible. What I hope it does is just keep a conversation going, but also for those out there that have been thinking about taking action. I hope that there are some concrete action steps that it allows people to start taking," she said.
She says what struck her the most while writing the report is the importance of having a broad audience when discussing issues of race and getting them involved in solutions, because it's a community-wide effort.
At the end of the document there are some recommendations for areas of leadership, community, hiring and government.
Check out the link right .
