Client News
We are so excited to see that Alicia Garza is on ESSENCE’s inaugural “Black Futures Now” list! Launched for Black Futures Month, the list honors changemakers who are fighting for our collective liberation. Alicia founded the Black Futures Lab to make Black communities powerful in politics, and believes that Black communities deserve what all communities deserve — to be powerful in every aspect of their lives.
Congratulations to our longtime partners at Grantmakers for Girls of Color for another amazing Black Girl Freedom Week! The theme for the 4th annual weeklong celebration of girls and gender expansive youth, and what is possible when we invest abundantly in their dreams, their power, and their leadership, is a “Future of Justice and Democracy.” The event this year featured inspiring conversations with celebrated leaders about urgent issues facing young people today, including affirmative action, reproductive justice, and voting, and how to be part of positive change. To learn more, check out this piece on the weeklong celebration for Nonprofit Quarterly and this piece in Black Enterprise. For highlights, visit 1billion4blackgirls.org.
While incidents of anti-Asian hate crimes have dropped in San Francisco, AAPI community members still don’t feel safe after the horrifying increase in 2021 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Janice Li, director of the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice, hate crimes actually paint a “very tiny picture of overall harm that occurs that’s impacting the Asian American community.” Coalition for Community Safety and Justice formed in 2019 from four nonprofits to address public safety concerns in the AAPI community. Learn more about AAPI community advocates’ response to the news shared at a recent public safety hearing in this piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Lee’s quarter-century serving in Congress has been defined by that desire to do right. At times it’s been a lonesome pursuit, but it’s one that she feels has, over the years, proved prescient.” A new Los Angeles Times feature profile on Representative and Senate candidate Barbara Lee traces her extraordinarily strong moral compass to her lived experiences as a Black woman growing up in the South and raising her family in the Bay Area and, from an early age, working with changemakers at the forefront of the movement for Black liberation. According to Ludovic Blain, executive director of California Donor Table, Lee’s supporters are working in the final weeks leading up to the March primary to educate more voters, especially young people, about her incredible record.
According to Christopher Wilson of PowerPAC – another Barbara Lee champion – those experiences uniquely equip her to address California’s most urgent challenges, including healthcare for all, reproductive rights, environmental justice, economic justice: “she knows firsthand the economic uncertainty that working-class communities experience when being just two paychecks away from bankruptcy, eviction, repossession, health crises, and homelessness.” Read Wilson’s compelling case for making Lee California’s next senator at LA Progressive.