All posts in Racial Justice

In the spirit of twitter’s #FollowFriday, here’s one from me.

We at the Kapor Foundation know Jordan Thierry well from his role as staff member of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation. But for the past 5 years, he’s also been director of the Black Fatherhood Project.

Most recently featured on the Open Society Foundations’ website, the Project is both a film and a nonprofit organization working to uplift a historical and present-day exploration and conversation about fatherhood in Black America. Ultimately, it will provide ”insight on how communities can come together to ensure the power of a father’s love is not lost on America’s Black children.”

As my colleague Justin Davis says about this project, “black men, fathers in particular, play an important role in the black family and within black culture. It is necessary that we understand the context for which this is so and why black fathers will have an even more significant role in the progression of the black community.”

This Friday and moving forward, you can follow Jordan and The Black Fatherhood Project by signing up for updates on his website, http://blackfatherhoodproject.com/?page_id=133.

Have a great weekend!

Cedric moderating "Quick Wits" at FCCP's Spring Convening

Taking place in Portland, Oregon, the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation’s annual Spring Convening allowed Cedric (FCCP Steering Committee member) and myself (former program director at FCCP) another great opportunity to learn about the latest and greatest happening in the field of civic engagement and to do so alongside our philanthropic colleagues.

Among many things discussed, one in particular has been of particular concern – voter suppression as a point of intersection, as an issue where separate attacks on various communities add up to something more insidious.

All data points to a new demographic reality by 2045. It’s around that year that people of color are expected to comprise the majority of the population. By most definitions, a healthy democracy would demand a parallel trend in the demographic composition of the electorate and of who votes.

This, though, isn’t the way our country is moving forward. There’s a fight right now over the composition of our electorate, both directly and less so. Here are three arenas where those fights are taking place and recent links to learn a little more about each:

• Voter ID Laws and the Voter Fraud Bogeyman – “How States are Rigging the 2012 Election” by EJ Dionne in the Washington Post
• Mass Incarceration within the U.S., namely 1 in 15 African American males ages 18 & older (combine this with voting laws disenfranchising formerly incarcerated individuals) – “[Infographic] Combating Mass Incarceration – The Facts,” ACLU
• Criminalization of Immigrants (combine this with denial of citizenship status) – “Immigrants for Sale” Video, Cuentame

The prospect of an increasingly unrepresentative electorate raises large questions, including for me: how does the ratio of residents to eligible voters, particularly if these attacks continue and succeed, compare historically? How does the ratio of residents to eligible voters compare across countries? Given the answers to these questions, how will people and parties respond to the implications of these numbers? How will they respond to the implications about what the numbers say about who we are as a country, where we’re headed and how and by whom our country will be governed?

Yes! We’re very happy to be among the initial co-signers of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy‘s new campaign, Philanthropy’s Promise, which impels grantmaking institutions to commit “at least half their grant dollars for the intended benefit of underserved communities, broadly defined, and at least one quarter of their grant dollars for systemic change efforts involving advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement.” Not only will this commitment help to channel grant dollars to communities most in need, it also offers a smart strategy for helping to maximize philanthropy’s collective impact! The Kapor Foundation is proud to join the 60+ other grantmakers, including many of our Bay Area colleagues, who have made this commitment.

Learn more about the initiative here: PhilanthropysPromise.org!

Read our statement here (pdf): Kapor Foundation’s Commitment

People, I have to say that if you’re in the house for the College Bound Brotherhood Graduation Celebration this Wednesday at the Oakland Museum, you’re in store for a beautiful evening! We’re building on the past celebration and on the momentum from this year’s Brotherhood activities. The event is close to being sold out, though! Click here for last minute registration!

Projections vary about the United States becoming a majority people of color country. Some say this shift will happen late this century, yet the latest census projections identify between 2030 and 2040 as ushering in the time when people of color will become the majority. One of our grant recipients, PolicyLink, released a great tool that will help you, your organization, and your community understand where these shifts have already occurred and project where we might see these changes take place in the coming years. The “Maps of America’s Tomorrow: Equity in a Changing Nation” is a multimedia series by PolicyLink exploring the United States changing demographics and the leaders who are making a difference as these changes take hold. These time-lapse maps run from the beginning of these shifts in the 1990s in states like California and Texas and go through the year 2040, where we are able to see these changes takes place nationally.

Angela Glover Blackwell, CEO of PolicyLink, said that within 36 hours of the release of this great tool over 200,000 people in 148 countries were able to access it. I agree with Angela when she says that the “Map of America’s Tomorrow is the catalyst of this rapid worldwide recognition of how dramatically and quickly the face of America is changing”. To follow this series of maps as they are developed, please visit www.PolicyLink.org/AmericasTomorrow.

Be sure to check out the upcoming Bay Area screening and discussion of “Beyond the Bricks,” an important documentary that has been making the rounds on the East Coast. More information is available here.

Yesterday, we were happy to see the Level Playing Field Institute‘s new report, ”The Voice of Nonprofit Talent: Perceptions of Diversity in the Workplace” get top billing in the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s daily update.

Please check out this timely piece by our colleagues at Kapor Enterprises and its implications for building, sustaining and growing diverse organizations.

Here’s a small excerpt to get you started …

Across the nonprofit sector, most employers share the belief that racial diversity is a key component of organizational health, performance, and outcomes. Yet, according to today’s nonprofit talent, few organizations are doing enough to attract and retain professionals of color. There is a perceived gap between the intentions and actions of nonprofit organizations when it comes to promoting staff diversity.

A common perception held by nonprofit professionals is that their employers value diversity, but that those values are not being translated into actions resulting in the creation of diverse and inclusive workplaces. For organizations seeking to increase the racial diversity of their staff, or retain their current employees of color, the ineffectiveness of mere “good intentions” around issues of diversity and inclusiveness presents a looming problem. Download the full report.

As many of us now know, Arizona has long been a laboratory for anti-immigrant legislation, driven and funded by prison companies and their profit motives. Tonight I’m headed back to the state. I’ll be visiting for the first time since shortly after SB1070 passed, supporting a delegation of allies on a learning tour both in Phoenix and Tuscon.  I hope to share reflections from this trip in a future post, but wanted to call attention here to another Arizona related headline.

In addition to being a laboratory for anti-immigrant legislation, the state has also been a laboratory for public financing legislation, but in this instance, increasing rather than criminalizing political speech and opportunity.  Arizona did this through their Clean Elections public financing law and its matching fund provisions.  It’s the constitutionality of this law, though, that the U.S. Supreme Court is now considering.  Below is a an update on this critical case, McComish v. Bennet, by Marc Caplan, program officer of the Piper Fund, a Mitchell Kapor Foundation grant recipient:

Piper Update – March 28, 2011 – Marc Caplan

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument today at 10:00 AM on the most important public financing case the Court has heard in more than 30 years.  The case, McComish v. Bennet, marks the first time that the Supreme Court has considered the constitutionality of a public financing measure since the landmark Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976, which upheld the presidential public financing system and other reforms. For that reason, it could have a profound impact on the ability of all levels of government to offer reforms which counteract the influence that powerful interests have over elections.

The McComish case challenges the matching fund provision of Arizona’s Clean Elections public financing law, which was enacted by voters through a ballot referendum in 1998.  The matching funds provision is “triggered” when non-participating candidates in an election spend above the amount of grants provided to publicly financed candidates and also can be triggered when independent expenditures are made against a publicly financed candidate.  In those cases, the publicly financed candidates receive additional grants. Through the 2008 election cycle, the law was used increasingly by candidates in Arizona, with solid majorities of both legislative and statewide candidates opting to run utilizing the Clean Elections law.

Despite the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in May 2010 that the Arizona matching-fund provision was indeed constitutional, the Supreme Court nevertheless intervened in June 2010 to block Arizona from making any “triggered” matching fund grants for the 2010 election cycle.  Following that action by the Court, many observers predicted the Court would decide to consider the legal issues presented in the McComish case, which they did in late November 2010.

The attack on the trigger provisions of the Arizona public financing law is part of the well-coordinated and financed multi-year assault led by right-wing legal centers on all aspects of campaign finance reform designed to empower moneyed interests with even greater influence over our country’s elections than they already have.   …

For the full update, including a summary of responses by public interest legal centers, the Brennan Center and the Campaign Legal Center, email Marc Caplan at mcaplan at proteusfund dot org.

Soon after college, I was taught and trained in a model of community organizing that had five core elements: base-building, campaigns, organizational development, alliance-building, and leadership development.  This last element, leadership development, has since been an area of work within the social justice field where I’ve found that I can both be incredibly inspired, but also incredibly frustrated.

So I was glad last Friday to attend Urban Habitat’s Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute (BCLI)’s information session in Oakland. [Read more about BCLI here.]  From the beginning of the presentation, it felt like leadership development done right. Many of the reasons why are evident in BCLI’s materials and on their website. I thought, though, that I would highlight two reasons that I hear us talk less about when looking at leadership development.

First, BCLI answers the question of exactly when and where their graduates will be able to practice the skills and use the knowledge learned through their program. It almost feels silly to credit them for this, as it’s why they exist at all, but I just don’t see that link too often. Groups that I’ve worked with have dozens of youth and adults go through their leadership development programs, but, and not to their fault, it wasn’t always clear where these members would then be able to all assume leadership roles.  Certainly the organizations themselves, with few resources and limited capacity, didn’t have enough open staff positions or even member leader roles available. Given this, BCLI not only points to the places where their leadership development program graduates can use newly acquired skills and knowledge, but also where all graduates of social justice leadership development programs throughout the Bay can now, if interested, play leadership roles and be supported in doing so.

Second, BCLI starts with the recognition of its participants, particularly poor and low-income communities of color, as being leaders in the room whose contributions and experiences will benefit their community, given the opportunity. This quality is one that has stuck with me from working with immigrant youth. It’s what I’ve understood to be the role model versus gang approach. While the former can provide a glimpse of a new reality for an audience, it could still also feel foreign and far off if their isn’t a deep connection with the speaker. The latter’s approach, on the other hand, proved instructive once we came to understand the appeal of gangs to Southeast Asian immigrant and refugee youth in the Northwest Bronx.  Rather than preparing youth to be leaders at some unknown time in the future, gangs, albeit tragically, offered responsibility and recognition almost immediately, allowing a place for them to apply and be recognized for the knowledge and maturity they had acquired growing up as the bilingual bicultural advocates of their community. Good leadership programs shouldn’t be gangs, of course, but I do think that they should include an approach that begins with recognition of existing leadership experiences and a trust to fulfill responsibilities based on this.

As someone new to the Bay area and to BCLI, I’m looking forward to learning more and seeing all that directly and indirectly comes out of this work.

* Title inspired by Paula Gidding’s book, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America.