Across histories and geographies, when the powers that be have systematically denied us safety and access to resources, Black women and gender expansive people have built innovative alternatives that ensure our communities’ survival. We have turned exclusion and marginalization into movement strategies rooted in solidarity and trust. Today, we invite our communities and allies to join us in resourcing Black feminist movements in this time of unprecedented attack.
From stokvel groups that allowed Black South African women living under apartheid who were systematically excluded from financial institutions to build economic autonomy, to mutual aid societies in the pre-Civil war American South that gave Black people access to support families if relatives fell ill or died, and susu groups that allowed market women in Liberia to mobilize the money to buy food during the civil war and afterwards, we have always found ways to mobilize and redistribute resources, showing up for one another when no one else would.
These practices, models of solidarity economics that emphasize collectivism while allowing individuals to exercise agency over who they build community with, and how their resources are utilized, are acts of resistance. They show us what is possible when we choose to invest in our communities, center our needs, and lead with trust.
Today, the stakes could not be higher. Authoritarian regimes and far-right movements divert resources away from movements for justice and equality and funnel them fervently towards militarization and repression. They create environments of chaos and fear, intimidating funders into passive acquiescence at best, and the active erasure of our histories and identities at worst. The U.S. government, for example, through its “commitment to eliminating radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans,” cut hundreds of millions of dollars of funding from programs that provide grants to organizations that support racial and gender justice, or that explicitly name “structural racism,” “LGBTQ,” “feminism,” “equity,” among others, in their institutional descriptions. It is reported that funders are eliminating grants to racial justice programs, or requiring organizations to alter their language and obfuscate their mandates.
At the Black Feminist Fund, we are meeting this moment with the urgency it requires. Where public and private funds have back pedalled, defunding organizations working in racial and gender justice, we are committed to resourcing Black feminist movements globally. As anti-rights regimes double down, so will we. With pressure from governments, lobbyists, and far-right movements to defund organizations working towards our collective liberation, the landscape of philanthropic funding is shifting. Philanthropy is at a crossroads, the cusp of a rupture, and we hold the tensions of the current philanthropic system and the philanthropy that we need to build a just world.
Our invitation to you is simple – join us. People like you who can give, at whatever capacity, make possible funding that challenges the norms about who is a donor and who is fundable. When capitalist and patriarchal systems fail us, as they are designed to, our communities come together. Despite being systematically excluded from philanthropic spaces, Black feminists are making the change this world needs now more than ever. Join us in funding them like we want them to win.
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