8 Lessons from Our Southern Grantees in the Fight for Equity and Justice

By Miabi Chatterji, Senior Program Officer at Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice

My colleagues and I at the LGBTQ Racial Justice Fund (RJF) have been thinking hard about how our institutions need to respond to the changes the Trump administration will make to our national culture and policies. Particularly for those of us who support vulnerable communities such as immigrants; refugees; Latinx, Muslim and black people; incarcerated or formerly incarcerated individuals; sex workers; LGBTQ people; youth of color and people with disabilities, we are wondering how we can help defend these communities that have so many solutions to reduce inequality and injustice.

The fund, a collaborative of nine leading progressive funders, supports grantee partners that, for many years, have been working in 10 Southeastern states on issues such as mass incarceration, the school-to-prison pipeline and state violence against LGBTQ people and people of color. It focuses on the South because of the many powerful multi-issue organizations poised to make an impact on racial justice and LGBTQ rights there and because of how under-resourced the region is philanthropically. And, as Southern racial justice and LGBTQ rights organizers are pointing out to us now, they know how to fight against right-wing repression.

We have been listening carefully to our cohort of brilliant and brave movement-building grantees, and I’m eager to share that we’ve heard.

For more on the 8 lessons outlined, please read the original article at NCRP.