Divest/Invest action in Minnesota.
For centuries, Black-led movement organizing in the United States and globally has played a critical role in shifting the culture, values, practices and laws related to the rights and liberation of not only Black people, but all people. This generational movement work—even while being met with consistent strife, violence and backlash—has led to undeniable social progress, from the abolition of slavery to the Civil Rights Movement and now the movement to divest from policing and invest in communities.
On Monday, October 3, Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF) Program Director Julia Beatty and Communities Transforming Policing Fund (CTPF) Program Director Jeree Thomas led a GEO session on the historical and political context of philanthropy’s support for Black-led movements, the vision, strategies and practices they bring to supporting Black-led movement work focused on safety and liberation, as well as lessons from the 2020 uprisings and continued backlash to this critical work.
Both the Black-Led Movement Fund and Communities Transforming Policing Fund have Requests for Proposal (RFPs) open through October 28. To learn more about the Funds’ work and current funding opportunities, visit the BLMF and CTPF web pages.
Funders can also further their political education by accessing the following resources, curated by Julia and Jeree:
- Barnard Center for Research on Women | Crisis of Criminalization: A Call for Comprehensive Philanthropic Response by Andrea J. Ritchie and Beth E. Richie
- Borealis Philanthropy | Fund Safe Futures Toolkit (PDF) | Fund Safe Futures: Lessons from Organizing Since the 2020 Uprisings (Vimeo)
- Borealis Philanthropy | Divest from E-Carceration: Combating the Expansion of Surveillance Technology and the Carceral State (PDF)
- Borealis Philanthropy | Arc of Justice: Supporting Ballot Initiatives for Transformative Change Toolkit (PDF)
- Critical Resistance | What is the Prison Industrial Complex? What is Abolition?
- Critical Resistance | Reformist reforms vs. abolitionist steps in policing (PDF)
- Critical Resistance | Reformist reforms vs. abolitionist steps to end imprisonment
- Digital SNCC Gateway | Fannie Lou Hamer Founds Freedom Farm Cooperative
- The Forge | Here We Go Again: Philanthropy & Movement Capture by Megan Ming Francis and Erica Kohls-Arenas
- Gerrit Smith | Gerrit Smith Virtual Museum and Library of Congress Image of Gerrit Smith Leaflet
- Inquest | Reclaiming Safety (Excerpt from No More Police: The Case for Abolition by Andrea Ritchie and Mariame Kaba)
- Journal of Urban History | From Black Power to Broken Windows: Liberal Philanthropy and the Carceral State by Sam Collings-Wells
- Leaf Chronicle | Bigger Than Music: How Harry Belafonte Contributed to Freedom Rides.
- Participatory Grantmaking Community of Practice | Participatory Grantmaking: Building Power Through BIPOC Leadership Webinar (YouTube)
- Philanthropy Roundtable | Three Black Philanthropists Who Helped Fund the Fight to End Slavery
- Project Nia | Defund the Police (YouTube)
- Project Nia and Interrupting Criminalization | One Million Experiments
- Mariame Kaba’s Spotify Playlist | We Do This Til We Free Us
- Wiley Online Library | The Price of Civil Rights: Black Lives, White Funding, and Movement Capture