Anti-Racist Soccer Club 10-Point Plan

In 2021 we had a very successful launch for our Community Kicks program serving marginalized communities within the Lansing area. For four consecutive weeks, participants received food, interactive training, nutrition guidance, and a chance to absorb important life skills. Lansing Common eagerly looks forward to expanding this program in 2022 by offering the same kind of training at multiple locations. One of our priorities will be to have more locations in the city of Lansing instead of suburban locations. As we seek to expand our commitment and investment to Community Kicks and other programs like this, the only thing holding us back will be budget restrictions, as it’s currently paid for by our operating budget, so we’re actively looking for a sponsor to help us fund this program sustainably and for the long term. Our overarching goal will remain the same: Use the beautiful game to draw a diverse pool of Lansing youth of all ages to professionally sponsored training.

The Lansing region is a diverse community composed of many groups that have historical connections to soccer. We will work to improve connections to these communities through our community outreach activities both to make them aware of Lansing Common FC and also to welcome them into our club. This includes working with our partners at Greater Lansing Open Soccer, who run adult recreational leagues and pick-up soccer programming that draws from a large, diverse base of local immigrants and refugees, many of whom aren’t aware of our club or its goals.

We are committed to having a roster that is made up of players drawn from our diverse community in Lansing. One way we can do this is by continuing to keep tryout fees as low as possible. When necessary, fees will be waived or reduced to eliminate any financial barrier to trying out for Lansing Common. We’ll make sure that this is clear to all participants by ensuring messaging about this is included whenever we advertise tryouts, and again communicated to participants during the actual events.

Lansing Common FC has taken and will continue to take steps to ensure that the community’s diversity is reflected throughout all levels of our organization. Our roster, our membership, our supporters, our volunteers, the Board, and those in club leadership positions will reflect and be responsive to the Lansing community. Our 2021 gameday support staff were a very diverse group that is still close with club leadership, and we’ll continue to work closely with them to make sure that group continues to reflect the diversity of this city.

We will partner with local organizations involved in anti-racism work so that we can access appropriate, powerful resources and then provide education at matches by giving such groups a platform to share information about their work and updates on issues they’re involved in.

We commit to using our social media platforms responsibly in order to share resources and educational materials with those following us. By giving partners access to our platforms, we will be able to amplify the work being done by others to combat racism and discrimination. Those partners include One Love Global, Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Metro Lansing, and others. This offseason we’ve used our social media to spotlight the work of these and other organizations in the Lansing community, to ask supporters to commit to volunteer with social justice organizations and to fundraise for them.

Our programming during the season is still in the planning process but we intend to use our Juneteenth home game to spotlight local Black-owned small businesses and non-profit organizations, we’ll continue to host a Pride Night that includes representation from many different and diverse groups in our community, and we’ll actively seek to use our social platforms to drive attention and dollars towards these groups that are making a difference locally and beyond.

The national anthem is not played at Lansing Common home matches and we support efforts to remove the national anthem from being played before all domestic sporting events. When necessary, we have educated community members about the reasons for this through informal conversations in response to questions. We will work on developing a consistent message and educational resources so that members of the club are prepared to answer any questions we receive.

We will create opportunities for our players to utilize club social media platforms to speak about social injustice, without placing a burden on players to do so. We have a record of doing this throughout our club’s history. In the weeks leading up to the season we’ll make a point of proactively communicating with players about the structure, mission and goals of the club, so that we know all our players are more aware of the community impact the club has and can have, and their role in this work. One admitted shortcoming that contributed to this work being limited in past seasons was we only communicated with players about activism opportunities as they came up instead of being proactive in our communications about these things.

As we work collaboratively to develop our players into change agents within the community, we will continue to invite players into ongoing dialogues to discuss how best to incorporate their voices into our platforms and our outreach efforts.

Transparency and open communication characterize Lansing Common FC. Anyone in the organization can report any concerns about potential issues connected to the club and be certain that such issues will be investigated and resolved in a fair and open manner. The club will ensure that anyone encountering racism or discrimination will know who to contact and will be able to trust that issues will be addressed. However, we know simply saying that isn’t good enough. We will work to develop a structure for reporting mechanisms and investigatory practices before support staff are hired and our roster starts practicing together, so we can share all of these systems and processes with members, players, and staff before our season starts.

We firmly believe that Lansing, Michigan will be a better community when all of the children who want to learn soccer can sign up for recreational play at no cost. Moving toward a minimal or subsidized fee structure advances us toward that goal, and for that reason, we will be donating to the Lansing Parks and Recreation Department and Lansing School District in 2022 to support their soccer programming for young people in the city. We will also provide financial support to assist the Lansing School District with setting up soccer fields at additional elementary and middle schools for use in the youth program, reducing the barrier of transportation to a central location.

Intermediate goals include securing the funding to pay youth league coaches; thereby removing the barrier of requiring parent volunteers to coach teams and improving the quality of coaching that players receive. To the extent possible, Lansing Common FC will assist those within the club who wish to further their coaching education. We will look to other clubs that have established programs to make coaching development more accessible.

Several board members are meeting regularly with the Lansing Parks and Recreation Department to assess the best way we can be supportive. We will continue our collaborative work with Lansing Public Schools and the city’s Parks and Recreation Department to have rec-level teams be school- and neighborhood-based at each elementary school in the Lansing district. When practices and games take place at neighborhood schools, the transportation barrier faced by many children in our community is mitigated or eliminated.

We will collaborate with the established community clubs such as Lansing Soccer Club, East Lansing Soccer Club, and other members of the Capital Area Soccer League to increase overall access to soccer. A key point of emphasis will be to increase awareness of scholarship opportunities available to those with financial barriers. We will work with local leagues and clubs to identify scholarship opportunities and increase awareness of them through our social media platforms, sharing information at games and community events, and sharing information with youth-serving partner organizations.

Being an effective anti-racist organization starts with active education and advocacy. We support all efforts in our community to end police brutality by working toward meaningful, substantive police reform, participating in protests, and proactively speaking up against threats in our state and our community. We will also continue our engagement with local partners such as One Love Global and Lansing’s Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation initiative, which are already engaged in advocacy to identify additional ways for Lansing Common to support the good work they have already started.

We will use our social media platforms and member communications to amplify calls to action by local organizations and share information. To the extent possible, board members will participate in local events and protests and invite members, players, and staff to join.

Our uniforms and team apparel (about 25% of our budget for soccer operations), as well as some additional merchandise options, are designed and manufactured by Moneyball Sportswear, which is a local Black-owned apparel company. When possible, catering contracts – another recurring expense – are placed with a Black-owned business in Lansing.

By actively partnering with Greater Lansing Open Soccer, a recreational soccer organization that provides soccer opportunities to a diverse audience in the Lansing area, we support a local business owned by a Taiwanese-American entrepreneur who believes that “there is nothing that brings people in this world together more than soccer.” Part of that work in 2022 will be in supporting the organization of youth pick-up games throughout our community, particularly in areas that have had less access to organized soccer in the past.

We must and will continue to identify similar opportunities to support minority-owned businesses and organizations when making purchases, planning for events and programs, and exploring where to make financial contributions. We are working on identifying minority-owned businesses that could be vendors at our games and that we could order food from for team and staff meals throughout the season.

We will continue to partner with and provide financial support to organizations like Summerplace United, St. Vincent Catholic Charities, and the Refugee Development Center, which work with refugees in the Lansing area. Currently, our partnerships with these organizations are primarily through financial means; we’ve made direct donations, organized supply drives, and encouraged members to donate as well. We’ve also created a charity kit for RDC and will have one of our home games dedicated to them and give them the opportunity to speak about their work and answer any questions at a table set up for them.

We will also work to strengthen the partnerships with local organizations such as One Love Global and the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Initiative in Metro Lansing. By encouraging our members to engage in learning and advocacy alongside these organizations, Lansing Common creates a multiplier effect for good.

In 2021 we donated tickets to the Refugee Development Center (RDC) and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Lansing. We will expand this in 2022, including partnering with local organizations like RDC to provide match information in multiple languages to reach refugee communities in Lansing and finding more organizations that serve underrepresented communities that we can donate tickets to.

We would like to explore opportunities to partner with organizations such as RDC, Boys and Girls Club of Lansing, One Love Global, Summerplace United, Lansing School District by donating tickets to them and providing transportation to matches, further reducing existing barriers to attending our home games.

For every Ambassador Membership we sell, we also donate 2 tickets to local community organizations. We will honor this same commitment in 2022 and explore expanding the program by offering our season-ticket holders an opportunity to fund additional tickets to be donated to local non-profit organizations and community groups.