Curfew Lifted, Victories and Losses #justiceforgeorgenyc #defundthepolice #nycprotest

At Washington Square Park. 

Thanks for this pic Erik R. McGregor. I'm super proud of all the work we are doing to change hearts and minds and policies. Here is the blog about our trip to dc last fall for a civil disobedience in front of the supreme court during oral arguments over sex and civil rights in the workplace.

https://benjaminheimshepard.blogspot.com/…/notes-on-civil-d…

Eric Sawyer and company in DC. Photo by Ken Schles

Its now been weeks in the streets.

These days, I get up early and write, and check out the JusticeforGeorge page. 

It lists protests in each borough, every day.

Each day, different thoughts cycling through,

But it feels hopeful.

Is there a way to get to the bottom of this so my kids don’t have to grow up in a world with this much inequality, this much distrust, this many lost lives?

I hope we can cope with some of the economic inequality soon.

Increasingly, it feels like we’re are making steps in the right direction.
I love seeing my friends, meeting new friends in the streets.
Reading poetry on bikes, wheels in motion. 

As my friend Barbara Ross

We are making a difference! From NYT...Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council — a veto-proof majority — pledged on Sunday to dismantle the Police Department, promising to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism.

Lots of debate about the looting.

The police let it happen, say those who were there.

And certainly, no one would be writing about the protests without the looting.

The riches in all the churches in Spain came from looting.

Who is looting and who’s looted?

The rich tax policies are also looting.

When someone talks about looting, it is worth asking, whose looting?

There has to be another kind of policing, that addresses problems and supports communities instead of doing what they are doing now, guns and lost lives.

In social work school, we learned crisis intervention.

You don’t rush people, you give them space.

Yet, the police seem to rush first amplifying problems instead of de escalating.

There are good news days and bad.

Friday and Saturday, skate to liberate,

Cyclists joining the bike bloc careening through Brooklyn, up and down Broadway.

Riding through the city, the boarded-up windows are full of graffiti, repurposed as art galleries, full of messages for the world.

Homeless people an art installations on every block.

It’s a Manhattan in constant flux.

On Monday, we hear about Atlanta, another man killed by the cops,

and the cycle of emotions starts again.

"We are gonna keep marching and lobbying and posting...we gonna keep on showing up..." #blacklivesmatter

Each day, rallies from Cadmen plaza to Washington square park, a speak out against the dreaded 88th precinct, and a bike bloc after dinner.

Cyclists everywhere. The streets are alive.

The glorious sight of the summer...

New Yorkers from all walks of life out in the streets together, fighting for a better day, once and for all.

Streets full of people peaceably assembling for a redress of grievances. #blacklivesmatter

Out to Grand Army Plaza for the

Solidarity Bike Ride.

Of course, how we get there counts.

For me, that means on a bike.

The holy bike block.

It's a critical mass at grand army plaza. #blacklivesmatter

It feels like all of Brooklyn is zooming to Grand Army Plaza.

I love the spontaneity of the rides, the vibe on the street, the feeling that it’s a movement for something better.

Solidarity expanding along with conversations.

The very act of reclaiming public space feels joyous.

The act of people talking to each other and sharing space feels essential.

In a democracy, we all have a right to public space, to assemble, to live, without fear of repercussions or the threat of violence.

A lot of us are getting there on bike.

As an article in the New Yorker by Jody Rosen on June 10, 2020

highlights a few of the powerful dynamics of this effort to claim public space:

“The National Association of City Transport Officials has reported an “explosion in cycling” since the outbreak of the virus; huge increases in sales have left bike shops with a shortage of stock. Bicycle politics, the causes championed by cycling advocates and activists, are often dismissed by critics as esoteric or élitist. But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities. In fact, you could say that Black Lives Matter is a moral crusade about freedom of movement and who is at liberty to go where. For generations, police departments have patrolled African-American neighborhoods like occupying armies, surveilling and circumscribing the movements of residents, who are treated as interlopers even on their home turf. The mobility of black people is additionally restricted by a system that construes their mere presence in many public spaces as trespassing, a de-facto crime, punishable by imprisonment or even death.

Tensions over freedom of movement are ratcheted up during times of civil unrest. In the past two weeks, the streets of American cities have become ferociously contested terrain. Protesters chant “Whose streets? Our streets!”; police impose their authority with weapons and barricades.”

Meeting in the streets, we’ve outlined a demand for a different kind of city.

We’ve petitioned the government and seen these demands find an audience:

“There’s a New Possibility in the Air” says Louis Colombo (June 9, 2020)

“What’s striking about Democratic proposals for police reform, aside from the awful optics provided by Pelosi and Schumer (best forgotten), is that proposals that would have seemed to most people pretty bold and forward looking a few weeks are already being met by charges that they don’t go far enough (they don’t). But the “obviousness” of this awareness shouldn’t be taken for granted.Instead we should recognize a real win for all the folks involved in the protests – a shift in mass consciousness so that now the real conversation isn’t about whether chokeholds should be legal (duh, no), but what “defining the police means,” what that would like in action, what new resources and types of “first responders would take the place of police,” etc.

There’s a new spirit of possibility in the air, new worlds being not just imagined, but discussed, and to this we owe the protestors – the kids on the ground – a world of gratitude.”

“SO WHAT HAS PROTESTING ACCOMPLISHED?”

asks a friend at Judson Church, replying:

“Within 10 days of sustained protests:

Minneapolis bans use of choke holds.

👉🏾Charges are upgraded against Officer Chauvin, and his accomplices are arrested and charged.

👉🏾Dallas adopts a "duty to intervene" rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in inappropriate use of force.

👉🏾New Jersey’s attorney general said the state will update its use-of-force guidelines for the first time in two decades.

👉🏾In Maryland, a bipartisan work group of state lawmakers announced a police reform work group.

👉🏾Los Angeles City Council introduces motion to reduce LAPD’s $1.8 billion operating budget.

👉🏾MBTA in Boston agrees to stop using public buses to transport police officers to protests.

👉🏾Police brutality captured on cameras leads to near-immediate suspensions and firings of officers in several cities (i.e., Buffalo, Ft. Lauderdale).

👉🏾Monuments celebrating confederates are removed in cities in Virginia, Alabama, and other states.

👉🏾Street in front of the White House is renamed "Black Lives Matter Plaza.”

Military forces begin to withdraw from D.C.

Then, there's all the other stuff that's hard to measure:

💓The really difficult public and private conversations that are happening about race and privilege.

💓The realizations some white people are coming to about racism and the role of policing in this country.

💓The self-reflection.

💓The internal battles exploding within organizations over issues that have been simmering or ignored for a long time. Some organizations will end as a result, others will be forever changed or replaced with something stronger and fairer.

Globally:

🌎 Protests against racial inequality sparked by the police killing of George Floyd are taking place all over the world.

🌎 Rallies and memorials have been held in cities across Europe, as well as in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

🌎 As the US contends with its second week of protests, issues of racism, police brutality, and oppression have been brought to light across the globe.

🌎 People all over the world understand that their own fights for human rights, for equality and fairness, will become so much more difficult to win if we are going to lose America as the place where 'I have a dream' is a real and universal political program," Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the US, told the New Yorker.

🌎 In France, protesters marched holding signs that said "I can't breathe" to signify both the words of Floyd, and the last words of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who was subdued by police officers and gasped the sentence before he died outside Paris in 2016.

🌎 Cities across Europe have come together after the death of George Floyd:

✊🏽 In Amsterdam, an estimated 10,000 people filled the Dam square on Monday, holding signs and shouting popular chants like "Black lives matter," and "No justice, no peace."

✊🏽 In Germany, people gathered in multiple locations throughout Berlin to demand justice for Floyd and fight against police brutality.

✊🏾 A mural dedicated to Floyd was also spray-painted on a stretch of wall in Berlin that once divided the German capital during the Cold War.

✊🏿 In Ireland, protesters held a peaceful demonstration outside of Belfast City Hall, and others gathered outside of the US embassy in Dublin.

✊🏿In Italy, protesters gathered and marched with signs that said "Stop killing black people," "Say his name," and "We will not be silent."

✊🏾 In Spain, people gathered to march and hold up signs throughout Barcelona and Madrid.

✊🏾 In Athens, Greece, protesters took to the streets to collectively hold up a sign that read "I can't breathe."

✊🏾 In Brussels, protesters were seen sitting in a peaceful demonstration in front of an opera house in the center of the city.

✊🏾In Denmark, protesters were heard chanting "No justice, no peace!" throughout the streets of Copenhagen, while others gathered outside the US embassy.

✊🏾 In Canada, protesters were also grieving for Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old black woman who died on Wednesday after falling from her balcony during a police investigation at her building.

✊🏾 And in New Zealand, roughly 2,000 people marched to the US embassy in Auckland, chanting and carrying signs demanding justice.

💐 Memorials have been built for Floyd around the world, too. In Mexico City, portraits of him were hung outside the US embassy with roses, candles, and signs.

💐 In Poland, candles and flowers were laid out next to photos of Floyd outside the US consulate.

💐 And in Syria, two artists created a mural depicting Floyd in the northwestern town of Binnish, "on a wall destroyed by military planes."

…Don't wake up tomorrow on the wrong side of this issue. Its not too late to SAY,

"Maybe I need to look at this from a different perspective.”

There is still so much work to be done. It's been a really dark, raw week. This could still end badly. But all we can do is keep doing the work.

Keep protesting.

WE ARE NOT TRYING TO START A RACE WAR; WE ARE PROTESTING TO END IT...

PEACEFULLY.

How beautiful is that?

ALL LIVES CANNOT MATTER UNTIL YOU INCLUDE BLACK LIVES.

YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN YOU DO NOTHING TO STOP SYSTEMIC RACISM & POLICE BRUTALITY.

YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN BLACK PEOPLE ARE DYING AND ALL YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT IS THE LOOTING.

YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN YOU ALLOW CHILDREN TO BE CAGED, VETERANS TO GO HOMELESS, AND POOR FAMILIES TO GO HUNGRY & LOSE THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE.

DO ALL LIVES MATTER? YES. BUT RIGHT NOW, ONLY BLACK LIVES ARE BEING TARGETED, JAILED, AND KILLED EN MASSE- SO THAT'S WHO WE'RE FOCUSING ON.

🖤🖤🖤BLACK LIVES MATTER🖤🖤

#blacklivesmatter #blm #nojusticenopeace #knowjusticeknowpeace”

Nick Encalada-Malinowski, VOCAL-NY writes:

VICTORY: After Years of Struggle 50a is Repealed.
Take Action Today to Defund Police

Yesterday the New York State legislature passed a bill to Repeal 50a, which Governor Cuomo has said he will sign by the end of the week. This ushers in a new era of transparency for police and corrections departments throughout the state.

Make no mistake, this would not have happened without years of actions & calls by YOU -- VOCAL-NY members and allies -- fearless leadership from Communities United for Police Reform and the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets across New York and the Country to demand justice.

Here is some early media coverage.

But as VOCAL-NY leader Roger put it so well, the work is not over.

"We are in a tragic situation, but we must connect and make clear that repealing 50-a is good, but it's not the only thing we need to make sure no cop in New York State abuses or assassinates another human being unjustified. We also need to make sure that no one goes to jail based on police lies and that anyone already in jail on police lies should have that conviction reversed. We need more criminal justice legislation as well."

The State Legislature and Governor still have a lot of work to do, both on policing and to end the torture happening in prisons and jails throughout the state. Passing the HALT Solitary Confinement bill, Elder Parole, Fair and Timely Parole & Less is More NY are actions they must take up, immediately.

Our urgent focus remains on the demand to Defund the Police. If you live outside New York

Tim Murphy

 Writes:

50-a (police secrecy) will be repealed. Chokehold ban passed. Some part of bloated NYPD budget (enough?) will be cut & moved to social services. And that’s all just in NYS.

Protest works.

Andy Humm

June 9 at 3:53 PM

There's a lot of hand-wringing about calls to "DEFUND THE POLICE" as if such rhetoric will hand the election to Trump. All the "smart" political strategists have gotten almost NO ACTION on their calls for police "reform." Activists are marching by the millions worldwide, tearing down statues, and demanding that policing be rebuilt from the ground up--not tweaked. The activists ARE getting ACTION. Politicians who have stood by police unions for decades are now having to go along with banning chokeholds, slashing police budgets, requiring transparency on police discipline, ending no-knock invasions, and much more. It's the same with health care. Mainstream Democrats said MEDICARE FOR ALL will scare people. The pandemic taught us that it is more desperately needed than ever. Don't fault activists for demanding what is needed. If we end up with less than everything it will be better than compromising before we got started.

Jay W. Walker

June 9 at 2:03 PM

To folks organizing in this moment for Black Lives and Communities, for those who have been organizing in The Resistance for the last three and a half years, and all of the issues-based and community-based groups that have made up its constituent parts, please remember that:
1) Times of tumult are stressful in ways seen and unseen. That stress can affect relationships within groups and among groups working in tandem or separately on the same issues.
2) Recognize that that emotions are part of the human condition and that negative, unproductive emotions flare up in stressful circumstances. Recognize that in yourself and within others. Do not let momentary outbursts born of stress poison your relationships.
3) The greatest enemy of our progressive, activist movements is not THE MAN or the organized enemies of progress. It is the Ego. It is that part in us that let's our emotions take over and place ourselves in the center of our reckoning rather than the movement(s) itself/themselves. Remember to keep your objectivity. Remember that we are all working toward the same goals even if we have different approaches and philosophies. Apologizing is not a weakness. Accepting an apology and moving forward is not rolling over. Don't let Ego undermine the important work we are doing. We have 5 months to create a sea-change in our horrifically damaged country.

Hold the line.

Throughout, we’re all in the “continual and slow process of coming apart.”

 Poems fly into my in box reminding me to take a broader view.

“the earth is a living thing

The Book of Light

Lucille Clifton

is a black shambling bear

ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea

…

is a black and living thing
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair

feel her brushing it clean”

You feel that sentiment out there, inside, you feel it.

The world is changing.

#The oldest card in the deck is divide and conquer. Stay united. Walk with confidence. This is community. Lemme see that energy, says a speaker at Washington Square Park.  #blacklivesmatter

In between it, we’ve started a new roof garden and compost heap in the back.

The pandemic has had its casualties, the people, the programs.

One of them was city composting, long a Brooklyn preoccupation.

In “This Compost”

Walt Whitman wonders:
“O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
…
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree…”

Old ideas are cycling through new ones,

Anna Olivier writes:
“I can’t say it better than my friend Sarah Lowery just did: Trump is resuming rallies at the site of the Tulsa race massacre (aka the Tulsa race riot, the Greenwood Massacre, or the Black Wall Street Massacre) on Juneteenth**. This is not an accident. This is a dog whistle for white supremacists. He’s inciting racists. He’s a racist. People who support him are racists. Full stop.”

And then he moved the date, in a rare bow to public pressure.

Progress? Can we celebrate? Its hard to when I think about what these moms endured.

Still, it feels like something.

Gov. Cuomo signed the historic bills into law in a press conference Friday

They make disciplinary records public, ban chokeholds, ban false race-based 911 calls and make the AG the independent prosecutor in killings by cops
Cuomo also issued an executive order mandating reforms to local police departments and said state funds will be cut to forces that don't comply
'That should be done in every police agency in this country,' Cuomo said
The unveiling of the bills was attended by the mothers of Eric Garner and Sean Bell, unarmed black Americans who died at the hands of New York cops
The move has come in response to the widespread protests calling for an end to police brutality and racism following the death of black man George Floyd
Rev. Al Sharpton praised Cuomo saying 'he has raised the bar'

Sunday, I can’t get near the Brooklyn Museum.

It’s a sea of people in white for
BROOKLYN LIBERATION:

An Action for Black Trans Lives
RALLY + SILENT MARCH,
SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2020, 1:00 PM from
OUTSIDE BROOKLYN MUSEUM
 

Be mindful of your presence if you are non-Black + cis. If you are white + cis, place yourself on the perimeter, and use your voice to amplify, not to lead.MIND THE SPACEPlease respect personal space and maintain a distance with masks on.DO NOT TALK TO POLICEWe will have lawyers and police liaisons on the ground should the need arise.LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHERCome with a buddy, check in on anyone who may need help.ACCESSBrooklyn Museum plaza is wheelchair accessible. Those that need seating should arrive early. We will be marching approximately 2 miles to another wheelchair accessible location. An ASL interpreter will be present….In the spirit of the movement, this event is in no part in collaboration with police, nor will we seek a permit.”

With thousands of people, it’s the largest trans rally I have ever seen.

By Monday, we hear that the Supreme Court has ruled in support of workplace protections for queer people.

I flash back to the October civil disobedience in Washington DC when 133 of us got arrested out side the court during oral arguments for the case.  

I'm super proud of all the work we are doing to change hearts and minds and policies.  

“Great news. And who knows, maybe the hundreds of us who got arrested in dc over this helped drive home the point?”

Andy Humm writes:

“Brothers and sisters and non-binary friends, with the declaration by the US Supreme that LGBT rights are now protected in federal law, this is a day for YOU--every one of you, LGBTQ and allied--who contributed to this cause to take a victory lap. We changed this society in profound ways--not just in the fifty-one years since the Stonewall Rebellion but in the 1950s and '60s through the brave work of pioneers in the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. As people of color know all too painfully, protection under the law doesn't end racism and this won't end all homophobia and transphobia. But equal protection under the law is essential to moving forward and YOU made it happen. A great day for us all. A great day for the United States of America.”

In important to recall that this victory was based on the work of generations of advocates for civil rights, including the Civil Rights movement.

Gregg Gonsalves writes:

“If there was no Civil Rights Act of 1964, the victory today extending that legislation's provision to include LGBTQ people would not have happened. We owe our own freedom to those who came before us. Our struggles are connected and we need to stand together now.”

Throughout the day, we hear more and more about the bad news in Atlanta.

Activists in Washington Square ask everyone to take a knee in honor of Rayshard Brooks, another black man killed by the police.

And then all the others Amadou, Eric, Sean, Emmet, Medgar.

“Why must we beg for no one murder?” asks one sign.

“Actions over apologies,” notes another.

“Decriminalize poverty.”

I talk with a young black woman.

She feels like we are making progress.

So do I.

But I hope we don’t have to see more deaths, more unnecessary losses.

They continue and continue, one after another, year after year.
8:46 was number of seconds on George Floyd’s neck,

Says Dave Chappelle.

He thanks the kids out in the streets.

“This is the streets talking for themselves, they don’t need me right now.”

8:46 is the time of Chappelle’s birth, when his mother died, and his father grieved for her.

The losses go on and on.

That’s a long time, enough time to remind us.

A lifetime.

At our activist informed reading group of Sunday,

we discuss Passing by Nella Larson, a story about Harlem in the mid 1920’s only sixty years after abolition.

Yet the problems linger.

A young man lynched:

“Dad, why is it that they only lynch colored people?” Ted asked.

“Because they hate em son.”

“why do they hate ‘em?”

“Because they are afraid of them.”

The son’s mother intervenes, stopping the conversation.

“It seems, son, this is a subject we can’t go into at the moment…”

The problem is the time to talk about it doesn’t ever really come.

At Washington Square Park, Barbara hands me a sign that says

“Reparations Now!”

Its well beyond the time.

Our whole system is based on the legacy of this cruelty.

As Karl Marx explains in the Poverty of Philosophy:

“Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns, as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery that has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies that have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance.”

Message from Southern Poverty Law Project:

Today we are grieving the life of yet another Black man killed by police — Rayshard Brooks, who was shot in the back by Atlanta police on Friday night.

His killing, alongside the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Sean Reed, Yassin Mohamed, Ahmaud Arbery and too many others, all by police or vigilantes, has further exposed white supremacy’s grip on our nation, including our systems of policing and prosecutorial enforcement.

We at the Southern Poverty Law Center stand with the millions of people around the world who are outraged by centuries of injustice and violence against Black people in this country. I share their anger, grief and great frustration at the never-ending litany of injustice.

This moment demands that we, as a nation, radically reimagine the interconnected systems of education, voting, labor and justice to eradicate deeply rooted oppression and anti-Black racism. We are eager to learn, share and join in the conversation on reimagining what our policing and prosecutorial structures could be if we started with a commitment to equity and justice for all.

Policing is an immediate and critical example of how systemic white supremacy continues to be a lethal threat to Black lives. The SPLC has exposed — and will continue to call out — the danger of white supremacy, hatred and acts of violent extremism for nearly 50 years, including acts of violence against Black people perpetrated by the police.

Today’s crimes by police against Black people are rooted in our nation’s shameful history. Our systems of policing were born from slavery and designed to control Black people and other people of color. The criminal justice and policing systems are tools of white supremacy in design and practice — a weaponization of law enforcement to maintain control over certain communities while protecting others’ advantages.

Immense injustice has brought forward immense pain — it has also catalysed action and a long overdue nationwide reckoning. Protesters and activists across the country have seized this moment to push transformative reforms with a newly awakened public. Massive marches and demonstrations have amplified the voices of Black activists who have been pushing for justice for years, and made clear the vast potential for change.

Now it is up to each of us to commit to righting the wrongs against the Black community. This time requires deep personal reflection on how each of us will take direct action to address anti-Black racism.

The SPLC stands united with movement leaders and our partners, especially in the Deep South, as we reaffirm our commitment to exposing and fighting white supremacy and work to build new systems of justice and a more equitable future for all. While this work will continue over the next several months and years, we have already taken some important steps:

• We have initiated discussions with local elected officials and police chiefs in our five states of the South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi) to begin discussing ways we can work to change policing.
• The SPLC Action Fund, our 501(c)(4) sister organization, is looking at district attorney races to engage in this fall where prosecutors have allowed police violence to go unchecked.
  
  
• We continue advocating for the removal of more than 1,700 Confederate monuments and symbols across the country and providing information about their history to thought leaders, lawmakers and journalists.
• We sent letters calling on the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, the secretary of the Air Force, the commandant of the Coast Guard and the chief of the National Guard Bureau to ban Confederate flags from their bases and installations around the world amid bans by the Marines and Navy.
• We are hosting a Juneteenth vigil on June 19 at 3 p.m. CDT at the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama, to honor the 300 Black people killed and 10,000 people left homeless by the Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921.
• We are organizing a Twitter storm to educate people about Black Wall Street and Juneteenth during President Trump’s planned speech in Tulsa the day after Juneteenth on June 20.
• Our Teaching Tolerance program is sharing resources to help teachers, children and families better understand structural racism and its impact in the U.S.
• We have committed to anti-racism training across the organization, starting with our leadership team, and we are engaging with organizers, activists, scholars and community members in ongoing learning in order to build a culture that supports Black leadership and other people of color.
• We are continuing to fight voter suppression and racial gerrymandering that intentionally targets Black voters.

Never has our work been more urgently needed, as the entire country (and world) is focused on structural racism and its impact in the United States. Our energies will continue to be directed at dismantling structural oppression, and working to silence the extremists, hate groups and racists who are desperately trying to hold onto power.

Each of us has an opportunity to show up differently in this moment of national reckoning. The SPLC stands united with you and all of our supporters as we recommit ourselves to fighting all forms of racism and envisioning new systems of justice and a more equitable future for all.

With gratitude,
Margaret