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In this three-part series, California Criminal Justice Funders Group (CCJFG) funder-members will come together to discuss and identify funding strategies that support alternatives to the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), including investing in community-led models that address lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment. We will learn about concrete funding strategies, hear from movement leaders, highlight CCJFG members’ work, and share practical strategies for supporting work that reimagines different models of community safety and justice.
Communication is fundamental to our lives. It’s how we connect with each other and navigate society. Yet our ways of communicating often exclude the one-in-six adults in America with a sensory or communication disability, including people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, blind or low-vision, have speech or intellectual disabilities, and many more.
“We are the ones we have been waiting for” is true for almost everything we do in our fight for equity and justice here in the Bay Area and beyond. As we seek to dismantle some of the inequitable and short-sighted funding practices of philanthropy, the same sentiment is true. Many community leaders across Northern California have been calling for a system shift for decades. And now is the time to take action.
Over the next 20 years in the U.S., $35–70 trillion in wealth will transfer from one generation to another in the largest generational wealth transfer in history, mostly moving within wealthy white families. The policies that make possible this protection and accumulation of wealth are situated within the legacy of land theft, genocide of Native people, enslavement of Black people, and exploitation of natural resources. This context of racial capitalism has also given rise to wealth accumulation that, in part, birthed the philanthropic sector. Paradoxically, many of us working within philanthropy aim to contribute to changes in systems, structures, and outcomes that address the harms of interconnected systems like racial capitalism that favor some at the expense of others and the planet.
The Asian Pacific Islander (API) community is gravely impacted by both the criminal justice and immigration systems, yet we don’t hear enough about the challenges and needs of this population. The API prisoner population grew by 250% in the 1990s and API individuals incarcerated in California received life sentences at double the rate of the overall state prison population.
Investing in community-led real estate infrastructure is a powerful strategy that promotes the security of place, creates affordability, builds wealth, and supports Black and Brown leadership of community real estate development.
Last week we celebrated Black futures and explored how we achieve a multiracial democracy that centers Black people. Northern California Grantmakers (NCG) and California Black Freedom Fund (CBFF) have been scheming to bring something to philanthropy for a while. More than 200 folks joined us to have some challenging conversations about the legacy of systemic racism, how it impacts today, and how we turn the corner and build a democracy that serves us all.