Black Women’s Lives Matter. Black Girls’ Lives Matter. Black Trans Lives Matter.
The Collective Future Fund stands in solidarity with movements calling for a future of justice and liberation, where all Black lives are valued. Alongside all those who have taken to the streets, we declare our ever-deepening commitment to challenging white supremacy and anti-blackness in all its forms.
Our grantee partners, which are Black-, Indigenous-, LGBTQ- and women-of-color-led organizations, have been mobilizing people to raise their voices and put their bodies on the line in the streets, in addition to providing direct relief and organizing support to frontline workers and survivors of all forms of violence during the pandemic.
As we mourn and mobilize for George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, we also say the names of Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Brianna ‘BB’ Hill, and Tony McDade, among so many others who have lost their lives to racist violence. We cannot ignore the fundamental underlying connections between the state violence that has been perpetrated against Black people for centuries, the pervasive harassment and violence that Black women and girls experience in their homes, workplaces and schools, and the tragically high rates of Black maternal mortality. We cannot ignore the connections between the extreme violence against Black trans women and the sweeping criminalization and incarceration of Black communities.
And this targeting, undervaluing, and underprotection of Black lives is evidenced within so many systems in our society. When COVID-19 hit, it began taking the lives of Black people at three times the rate of white people, and brought an economic recession that has left 30 million people unemployed with Black workers impacted the most. The police’s militarized response to protests, coupled with vigilantism, has traumatized communities further. This leaves communities confronting multiple crises of safety and survival at once.
As we witness this unfold in the United States, we also see expressions of solidarity around the world, pointing to the fact that anti-black racism is a problem globally, and solidarity efforts are required with other oppressed groups to address it. In the US and globally, women, queer, and trans people of color are holding down the resistance at the same time that they are reimagining systems and showing us what a world free from violence could look like. Collective Future Fund’s grantees are leading the way with fierce, strategic, and compassionate efforts to end gender-based violence.
The Collective Future Fund is committed to continuing the work of healing, resourcing, and mobilizing together. We must ensure that Black and Indigenous women, survivors, and their communities have support to process the violence and racism inflicted on them, while facilitating processes of truth and reconciliation.
We are whole-heartedly committed to longer term work around the actions this week as driven by the Movement for Black Lives: we stand in solidarity with protestors around the world, and we are committed to strategies for divesting from police and prisons and investing in communities. We are dedicated to advancing immediate relief for Black communities, building community control, and ending the war on Black people once and for all.
We will deepen our efforts within the philanthropic sector to challenge white supremacy, grow resources for movements to end gender-based violence, and shift cultures and systems in support of girls and women of color.
Together, we must build a future that protects and honors Black and Indigenous lives, because our collective liberation depends on it.
