JC members and leaders are New Yorkers whose lives are impacted by police violence, including families who have lost loved ones to the New York Police Department. Since 2004, Justice Committee has received 14 North Star Fund grants totaling over $150,000, including the 2015 Frederick Douglass Award.
Over the past year and a half, people from across the country have risen up and are calling for a transformation of our country. Across all of the demands and work coming from different parts of the movement, we seek at least three basic things.
Black Lives Matter organizers say their announced protest at the Mall of America was a “planned diversion” and a “decoy.” Their real goal was the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport. Protesters did show up at the nation’s largest shopping mall Wednesday afternoon, but they quickly left and boarded trains for a quick trip to the nearby MSP airport where they blocked traffic and caused delays at both of the airports.
Tides and its sister organization, The Advocacy Fund, work closely with funders and grassroots organizers to accelerate policing reform. Since 2010, we’ve been bringing people together to find innovative solutions for safer communities.
As non-Black people of color, we recognize this differential treatment as another example of how the state specifically targets and criminalizes Black communities. District attorneys across the country, including O’Malley, fail again and again to prosecute police officers for the murder of Black people, and instead use their time and resources to prosecute Black activists fighting for their lives under a state of emergency.
The Abolitionist Law Center is a public interest law firm [...]
December 3rd, 2015 (Minneapolis) — We recognize that Black people in America, some of whom are LGBTQ, are systematically oppressed and we stand together affirming that Black Lives Matter. As LGBTQ organizations, we acknowledge that while our work is bound up with movements for racial healing and justice, and many members of our organizations and communities have shown up in support of this movement, we historically haven’t done enough to align our missions with work for racial justice. With this letter, we want to publicly state our support in a unified way, and ask our friends and supporters to step forward with us.
Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families proves that the costs of locking up millions of people is much deeper than we think. Locking up individuals also breaks apart their families and communities, saddles them with overwhelming debt, and leads to mental and physical ailments. The situation is dire, but a better approach is possible.
Have you found yourself thinking something urgently needs to change after seeing headlines about the latest abuses perpetrated by the criminal justice system? How did criminalization become a defining characteristic of American society? What can we in philanthropy do about it?
In the past two years, Communities United for Policing Reform (CPR) has played a critical role in leading a campaign to pass landmark police accountability legislation in New York City and partnering with families of New Yorkers killed by police to secure executive action by Governor Cuomo to establish a special prosecutor for police killings throughout New York State. In spite of these victories, there remains much more to accomplish to transform police systems, policies, practices, and culture to be more accountable and transparent to the communities they serve. We invite you to join CPR and funders for a briefing to contextualize the recent victories and to learn how the philanthropic sector can partner with advocates to support this critical work.
