Mitchell Kapor Foundation Weblog

This past weekend, we attended two excellent gatherings: Applied Research Center’s National Facing Race conference and the 7^th annual Green Festival.

CARMEN:

The Facing Race conference provided an important opportunity for national organizers, activists, elected officials, artists, academics, and everyday community members to sit together and develop strategies in order create a national movement whereof race could be the centerpiece. Sponsored by the Applied Research Center (ARC), which is the home for media and activism on racial justice, the conference introduced the Compact for Racial Justice as a plan for fairness in and across communities throughout the country. This conference proved to be an important learning experience for all of those involved, as the large plenaries engaged issues ranging from the current economic crisis to teaching participants skills on how to place race at the center of current social justice debates.

The conference also built in smaller sessions where specific issues, movements, and programs could discuss their work using the issue of race as the frame. For example, I attended a discussion on how to inject a racial justice perspective into the emerging debate on green jobs. The presenters included Maka Agbo from Ella Baker Center’s Green Collar Jobs Campaign, who described the ways the campaign moved between policy making to job training in order to provide a comprehensive pathway towards a green economy.

In the days following the event, ARC’s media team pulled together a great set of informational videos like this one from the plenary titled “Race & The Election: November 4^th and Beyond”, which highlights key presentations from the conference. This, along with the many other informational sessions allowed for great discussions and a whole lot of learning.

TIFFANY:

The Green Festival was co-sponsored by Co-op America and Global Exchange and hosted 125 speakers, 350 local and national green businesses, and a number of community and nonprofit groups. All exhibitors were screened for their commitment to sustainability, ecological balance, and social justice using Co-op America’s green business standards. As a person who struggles to find consistent ways to incorporate a ‘greener’ lifestyle, I learned a lot from attending this event.

One of the most interesting speakers I heard was Dr. Ellis Jones, a professor from U.C. Davis, who has done extensive research on “the social and environmental responsibility of every company on the planet AND making it available in practical forms that individuals can use in their everyday lives.” This research was incorporated into a website, http://www.betterworldshopper.org/, that gives ‘grades’ to commonly used companies based on their environmental practices. If you’re curious about how the companies you frequently support are doing in the environmental arena, please check out the website. Dr. Jones said that every dollar we spend is a vote for or against environmental sustainability. I will definitely be tweaking the companies that I support as a consumer.

The most pertinent message that I took from Dr. Jones’ presentation is that each person can create a unique contribution in this movement to create a more sustainable environment. He said that our personal plans to improve our own ecological footprints will help change the world we live in. To me, this means that every effort that I make or that you make to recycle a plastic bag, or to support a local farmer, or to try walking to the train station instead of driving, or other achievable personal goals will contribute to this green movement.

I’m encouraged to push myself a little more each day, and as I travel home to Georgia this Thanksgiving, I will be sharing this message with my family as well.

Hi Grantees, Community Organizers, Green Activists, and MKF Partners!

My name is Carmen Rojas and I am the new Grants Officer at the Mitchell Kapor Foundation. It’s been an exciting couple of days as Tiffany, Cedric, and I develop our work groove and I begin to think about the future of our Green Access work.

As many of you know, we are deeply committed to participating in and supporting the conversations and organizing efforts occurring in the areas of climate justice, green jobs, and building healthy and sustainable communities of color throughout the Bay Area. I am here to make sure that we are a stakeholder in all of these areas as well as to support organizations that are on the ground doing and thinking about this work. Specifically, I will be overseeing and managing the grantmaking process in the area of Green Access as well as working with partners to define the opportunities and challenges for the future of this work.

I’m currently wrapping up a dissertation in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley so  I’ll only be in the office part-time until January, but I am excited to meet you in the coming months and start laying the foundation for our future work together.

We are extremely encouraged about the prospect of an Obama administration in which the target issues of the Mitchell Kapor Foundation — education, environment, and civic engagement — are well-aligned with the winds of change now blowing across the country.  Our lens on these issues — the focus on low income communities of color — also resonates with the inclusive message of the Obama campaign.  Indeed, these groups gave him his margin of victory in many states.

Of particular note is the campaign’s promise to partner with non-profits and social entrepreneurs to amplify government efforts to improve collective-well-being.  We look forward to convening the civic and voter engagement groups we funded to exchange lessons and help us chart our course going forward.  In addition, a joint project of the Level Playing Field Institute (www.lpfi.org) and MKF is to canvas programs focusing on STEM (science, technology, education and math) education for low income students of color so as to promote collaboration and identify effective models.  Emerging from our economic crisis depends in part on U.S. innovation.

As President-elect Obama says: Together, we can bring about the change we need.

Wow. I’m stunned. Elated. Much has been written already, so there’s little need for me to babble on, but I’m tremendously happy about the new incoming administration. Moreover, I’m deeply proud of our grantee and partner organizations and the various roles that they have played in helping to prompt the massive voter turnout and monitoring of the electoral process. We’ll soon be able to have a measure of effectiveness of their work as organizations begin to sort out their voter participation data. I can’t wait!

Sure, we as a nation still have a ways to go with respect to smooth elections administration, since elections oversight varies greatly from county to county. I’m factoring this issue into the Foundation’s grantmaking priorities for 2009. It isn’t too early to work on improving on our electoral processes now that voting is in vogue again!

On a strictly personal level, I’m mad and disappointed about the passage of Prop. 8, the latest in a series of mean-spirited, progress-limiting initiatives written into law (remember 187, 209, 227, and 22?). I continue to question the role – or even the legitimacy - of public policy making by mass balloting, particularly in today’s money and media driven campaigns.

Next Monday and Tuesday, the Foundation is sponsoring one of the call center sites for the National Campaign for Fair Elections, organized chiefly by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. Callers can find their polling places and ask other logistical information, as well as report any obstructions or inconsistencies at polling sites. Everyone should have access to the ballot on November 4th, and all votes should be counted! Spread the word about 866-OUR-VOTE!!

Now, I’m off to get married at City Hall.

Comic strip: Candorville, by Darrin Bell

Okay, I should’ve known this was coming when community organizers were maligned at the RNC convention.  I write this post with a nonpartisan spirit, knowing that increased voter registration and participation benefits and strengthens our democracy, as do efforts to root out voter suppression. But it angers and sickens me that a well-established and well-respected group like ACORN can be put in the line of fire for following the rules - yes, orgs doing voter registration drives must turn in ALL of the reg forms (details vary from state to state), even if Mickey Mouse is listed as the potential voter.

Fortunately, ACORN is no shrinking violet, and neither are its allies. People for the American Way ran this full page ad in the New York Times.  In this ugly campaign, we must continue to expose injustice and the real frauds - those who work to minimize and deny access to voting!

Last Friday, October 17th, I attended the Level Playing Field Institute’s (LPFI) Annual Fairness Matters Gala event, which honored Dr. Tyrone Hayes and Justice Matters Institute for their work in creating opportunities for students of color within California.

A core grantee of the Mitchell Kapor Foundation, LPFI was founded in 2001 by Dr. Freada Kapor Klein and “promotes innovative approaches to fairness in higher education and the workplace by removing barriers to full participation.” Because the mission of LPFI resonates very well with our Black Boys College Bound Initiative work, each of our 11 BBCBI grantees were able to send one staff member and one young man from their programs to attend this event. It was a great opportunity for them to learn more about LPFI’s programs.

I was inspired by Dr. Tyrone Hayes’ award acceptance speech in which he highlighted significant moments in his history where he struggled with racism in spite of high levels of academic achievement. He talked warmly about various individuals who saw opportunity in him and scaffolded him even when he wasn’t performing at his best potential. I was also touched by one of the IDEAL (
Initiative for Diversity in Education and Leadership) Scholars who spoke of her personal struggles as a poor immigrant from Mexico who was able to transcend her economic status to be the first in her family to attend college through the support of LPFI and the IDEAL Scholars program.

The overwhelming message that I got from the event and all the speakers is that help can come from the most unexpected places. I am very grateful for all the educators and elders in my past who saw fit to encourage me and for the organizations like LPFI whose missions are to give that extra bit of support that can help change the lives of well-deserving and dedicated youth from low-income communities and communities of color.

Posing with 3 BBCBI program participants at LPFI Gala

The notion of a green economy is one of the hottest topics today. There have long been crusaders for humans to live more sustainably with Mother Earth—from Native cultures to Al Gore’s recent book & film, An Inconvenient Truth. But, there has been a notable shift in the movement towards ‘mainstreaming green’ such that things like sustainable buildings and composting aren’t only heard in the conversations of the elite. Nothing is more evident of this than when, during the second town hall style Presidential debate, a female, African-American college student and department of children’s services employee asks Obama and McCain what they would do to address climate change during their administrations, if elected. She was the only person to bring up environmental issues during that debate. A green collar economy is another facet of how this environmental conversation has become mainstreamed—so that all people regardless of status, race, or zip code can benefit physically and economically from green principles.

Right now, one of the most prominent voices advocating for this green economy is Van Jones, co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and founding president of Green For All, both Mitchell Kapor Foundation grantees. I just started reading Van’s new book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. I’ve only read up to page 10 :), but so far, my favorite line is on page 6 in regards to using corn as a source of fuel: “In a world full of hungry people, burning food should be criminally punished—not financially subsidized—by the U.S. government.”

Doesn’t that politically charged, social justice-oriented quote make you want to go out and get your own copy of this book?!? I know that I can’t wait to finish reading it to find out more about what kind of solutions Van has to suggest regarding green jobs and alternatives to our dependency on fossil fuels. If you want to find out more about this book, you can go to Van Jones’ site, or you can go pick up a copy at a bookstore nearest you!

Juliet Ellis of Urban Habitat invited me to attend the recent National Black & Latino Summit, held in Los Angeles earlier this week. The Summit, sponsored by PolicyLink and the William Velazquez Institute, was the initial gathering to set an agenda for building alliances between African American and Latino/Hispanic communities, capitalizing on the perhaps unprecedented levels of excitement and mobilization around the Presidential elections.

As you well know by now, ours are the largest ethnic groups of people of color in the U.S. (even though there are black Latinos, but that’s another story); together we’re projected to comprise nearly half of all Americans in the next 40 years. One could assume a natural connection between black and brown people, given that we face similar marginalization-based challenges around health, education, criminal justice and housing, but perceptions over lack of jobs, community safety, and resources have caused tension between the two broadly-defined groups. (Am I saying anything that you don’t already know?) Nevertheless, goodwill and shared accomplishments do exist, and I was quite moved by the connections across ethnicity and geography that I witnessed.

Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and CEO of PolicyLink, presided over the Summit, directing the 500 plus attendees not to expect answers by the end of the short gathering, but to consider this the first step in many conversations and actions that will grow to include other allies as well.

Highlights:

• Robert Ross, President of the California Endowment, shared an introductory anecdote about Fish and Jazz Fridays with his black father and Arroz con Gandules and Salsa Sundays with his Latina mother, all under the same roof while growing up in the Bronx.
• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke about historical connections made by community organizers, most famously by Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr., but also enacted by many others.
• Following a thoughtful performance by dance company CONTRA-TIEMPO, Tavis Smiley directed an interesting panel on the role of arts, culture, and activism in helping to unify and transform communties.

There were two large panel discussions on eight issues (criminal justice, immigration reform, education, workforce, transportation, health disparities, housing, and environmental justice). Each panel discussion was based on working policy briefs distributed in advance. Dr. Manuel Pastor outlined areas  of critical importance in workforce development, an especially sensitive issue in low-income Latino and black communities that view each other as competition for “unskilled” jobs. Dr. Robert Bullard, john a. powell, and James Bell made provocative remarks on educational challenges, environmental justice, and criminal justice, respectively (wish I could detail them more fully here).

I had mixed feelings about the small group “fishbowl” exercise that we participated in, but it provided a glimpse into a guided (and somewhat polite) all-Latino conversation about potential conflicts and connections with African Americans. This helped me to develop a starting point of sorts for understanding certain perspectives. Later I challenged our entire cohort of blacks and Latinos to take alliance building with us into everyday interactions by taking advantage of “teaching moments” and confronting bigotry, stereotypes, and xenophobia whenever possible.

This may sound Kumbaya to more skeptical ears, but such convenings are vital baby steps in a longer, larger race. I left the Summit with a terrific sense of hope that, as my favorite poet Nikki Giovanni once wrote, “all good people/could come together/and win without bloodshed.” Yes we can.

Someone asked me how the current economic crisis is impacting the Foundation. Great question! We’re very fortunate to have brilliant, social justice-oriented investment officers and money managers looking out for our best interests. They’ve devised a strategy that should enable our investment portfolio to weather this terrible storm pretty well (see an edited version of Mitch’s recent slideshow presentation to staff).

Speaking of investments, we’re working to further align the values that guide our grantmaking and investments, particularly around green jobs and businesses. As I understand it, our basic principle is to gain a high return for “positive impact” portfolio investments, which will further support our positive impact “investments” in community-based organizations through our targeted grantmaking. We seek to be as green and socially-responsible as possible. (But PLEASE do not take this as a call for portfolio investment pitches – heed the old saying: “Don’t call us…”)

At any rate, as we move through our 2009 budgeting process, we’re committed to supporting grantees, both new and continuing. The next round of grant requests is due on November 7th for consideration at our December Board meeting. So despite the economic turbulence, we intend to proceed steadily and deliberately.

Photo by Christopher Chan via Flickr.