WE STAND WITH BLACK LIVES

 
 

Here are some links we hope you will find useful in how to support the fight to end police brutality and systemic violence against Black people. Please note that this list is meant as a starting point and is in no way exhaustive. We are not authorities on the subject and encourage you to do your own research, there are plenty of Black activists and scholars out there who have made available their work online (don’t forget to pay them!).

If you are looking for our zine Storm Now, click here.

IF YOU CAN SPARE MONEY

If you can, donate and help raise funding for national and local organizations.

People’s Breakfast Oakland is a Black grassroots org currently raising money to bail out protesters.

Black Earth Farms is a Pan African and Pan Indigenous Farming Collective delivering free food to protesters who have been harmed during the uprising.

Spend your money at Black owned businesses using BAOBOB directory.

IF YOU CAN ATTEND PROTESTS

Support and follow orgs such as Anti Police Terror Project for the next march. If you are white, follow the lead, listen, and physically form barriers to protect Black protesters and darker skinned POC who are more at risk of receiving violent retaliation from police. Be prepared and organized, wear a mask, conceal your tattoos, choose comfortable shoes and nondescript clothing, protect your and others privacy, be think twice before sharing footage on social media.

OTHER ACTIONS

Move beyond surface-level allyship, or as @mireillecharper calls it, optical allyship. Check out 26 ways to be in the struggle beyond the streets, shared by @ty_ushka. Organizations like the East Oakland Collective, Anti Police Terror Project, Black Lives Matter, Black Visions Collective and Color of Change all share petitions, actions other than marches (distributing supplies, showing up at meetings, volunteering to cleanup after protests), workshops and other ways to be involved.

Read and educate yourself using existing material (without asking for your Black friends and coworkers to do the labor for you), amplify Black voices rather than speaking for them or over them, sign and circulate petitions, source-check and spread accurate information, make and distribute masks, have hard conversations with the people around you.

To the Asian-American community,

We must recognize our privilege as non-Black POC, especially those of us who are light-skinned. As the designated “model minority”, we benefit from our proximity to whiteness, in spite of the racism we experience, and despite the growing anti-Chinese and broader anti-Asian sentiment many of us felt since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. We must acknowledge that anti Blackness is prevalent in our communities. This is the first step toward ceasing to participate in this system of oppression, so that we can work to dismantle it. While I agree with the statement that “none of us is free until all of us are free”, and that we absolutely owe Black activists who have paved the way for us in many ways, I believe that the awareness that people among us are being discriminated against, denied adequate healthcare treatments, denied housing, incarcerated, and murdered systemically at such disproportionate rates alone should be distressing enough to urge us to act. Here are some reads and actions to get started: