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NCG is thrilled to share Liana Molina is joining the NCG team as Director for Policy and Movement. Learn more about Liana's experience, what this role means for NCG, and get to know her here.
We're thrilled to share that we are expanding NCG's capacity around climate and disaster resilience. Katie Oran (she/her) has joined NCG as its first-ever Climate and Disaster Resilience Fellow playing a central role in supporting the development of regional and statewide strategies. Katie brings experience in climate adaption, disaster response, land use planning, climate justice organizing, and wildfire mitigation.
Working in racial equity and social justice in the philanthropic sector is challenging because the “personal is political,” and there often feels like no break from our 9-5 roles. We don’t get to take off our skin or the grief we feel in our bodies from the years of oppression of racism that our people have endured.
This is not the New Year’s message I was hoping to write. There was a moment this fall when things started feeling like they might just fall into place. We saw progress on the pandemic, and it felt like 2022 might herald a fresh beginning. But reality intervened, as it tends to do.
First, let’s get honest about the historical context we are operating in. Philanthropy exists as a result of capitalism and was formed through centuries of slavery, colonization, and displacement. The systems are designed to extract resources, privatize wealth, and centralize power and control of said resources. The systems are successfully doing exactly what they have been designed to do.
Last year in July 2021, NCG hosted a conversation with trans women of color leaders and queer/trans funder advocates–including the Akonadi Foundation, Borealis Philanthropy, Funders for LGBTQ Issues, Horizons Foundation, and Solidaire–to highlight trans leadership and dispel myths that BIPOC trans leaders and their organizations were being adequately resourced, even in the Bay Area.
My partner and I recently engaged in the annual ritual that is paying U.S. income tax. Gather your documents, fill in the forms, look for deductions that never seem to be there, watch what you really make become clear…as we approached the finish line, I wondered – how can I reframe the act of paying taxes? Then I harkened to a recent moment where paying a tax had a completely different feel, one that not only felt necessary but made a small yet substantive step toward advancing racial equity. I refer of course to NCG’s participation in paying our region’s Indigenous land and honor taxes. We began that commitment as an organization in 2022 and trust me, it’s been both vital and fulfilling.