Racial Justice Resources
To Watch
On Netflix, you will find 13th, an important documentary about the history of racism and violence since slavery ended and the link to today’s mass incarceration and policing of African-American men. Documentary I am not your negro envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, Remember This House. Here is an interview with the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. For inspiring fiction, Selma is about the history of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, and Just Mercy is the story of civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson.
To Read
Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the Case for reparations in this essay. The 1619 project, created by Pulitzer price Nikole Hannah-Jones, is a collective work centered around the consequences of slavery in the U.S. President Barack Obama wrote a piece on how to make this a moment of change. A feminist bookstore created a list of resources for white people to educate themselves about racial justice and learn tools to help in the fight for equality. Additionally, The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide, looks at how government policy helped create, and can help tackle, racial disparities in wealth in the United States. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Explores race’s influence on the application of criminal justice in the U.S.
To Follow
The #SayHerName campaign was founded by African-American mothers who lost their daughters to police brutality. Ibram X. Kendi is the Director of the Antiracism Center. Black Visions Collective is organizing the protests in MN.
For Children
How to talk to children about structural racism and its history in the U.S.? Follow Chester!, by Gloria Respress-Churchwell, is a great book to do just that, and it is based on a true story that took place at Harvard. Check out the audio version.
Consider purchasing books that feature black and POC protagonists and heroes. A few good lists are here, here, and here. To purchase any of the books listed, consider ordering them through one of the black-owned independent bookstores linked here.
To Donate
Food Justice For Frontlines: People in the area are hurting, the grocery stores in the neighborhoods are no longer open, and many people are out of work. Starting Saturday Twin Cities DSA is supplying hot food and groceries (including fresh produce purchased directly from a local farm) near the 3rd Precinct. Twin Cities Solidarity Fund provides a direct disbursement of cash without means-testing. We are still in a pandemic and people are struggling! Black Visions Collective, Reclaim Our Block, CTUL are all doing critical local organizing. Donate to the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Donate to anti-white supremacy work such as your local Black Lives Matter Chapter, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, Color of Change, The Sentencing Project, Families against Mandatory Minimums, A New Way of Life, and Dream Defenders. Join some of these list-serves and take action as their emails dictate.
This list is periodically updated with resources shared from alumni around the world.