The Let Us Breathe Fund, a locally-based Black-led organizing fund, was recently awarded $200,000 in grants to support grassroots campaigns dedicated to ending police violence against Black people.
The new funds come from the New York Community Trust, one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the U.S. In a recent initiative, they awarded $7.7 million in grants to 39 nonprofit organizations around the city. The aid supports local organizations in addressing various community needs, including care for cancer patients, support for youth development programs, and improvement of housing and public transportation.
The Let Us Breathe Fund, in particular, supports organizing around police reform and Black liberation. It is one of several campaigns within North Star Fund, a social justice charity that provides aid to grassroots organizations led by communities of color.
“Our hope is that two things: One is that we are providing long-term sustaining financial and other resources to Black-led organizing groups who remain and often are the most underserved, underinvested in the sector,” said Jennifer Ching, Executive Director at North Star Fund. “And then we really hope that the fund is a model for the way we can do philanthropy differently, that philanthropy can be collective. It doesn’t have to be in the ownership of just the few people who have the most resources.”
Ching explained that the North Star Fund aims to channel the money that they raise into the hands of community organizers directly working to address police accountability.
For Shawn Morehead, the Vice President for Grants at the New York Community Trust, the collaborative nature of the grantmaking process at North Star Fund appealed to her.
“It incorporates a participatory grantmaking process so that people who have been affected by police violence or overly intrusive justice systems are involved, not only in doing the work funded by the grants but also in making decisions about how those grants are deployed and distributed,” said Morehead.
The Let Us Breathe Community Funding Committee decides how resources are dispersed. The committee consists of activists skilled in Black-led organizing and police accountability.
Kesi Foster, a member of the Let Us Breathe Community Funding Committee, explained that the goal of the funding is to bolster the efforts of Black-led organizations in combating police violence.
“These resources are coming at a dire time,” said Foster. “Because the reality is Black-led organizations get a really small amount of philanthropic funding, and so the resources are really critical to continue to consistently lift up Black-led organizations.”
He further mentioned the lack of accountability from legislation.
“The police police themselves,” he said. “They’re not accountable to elected officials, so there needs to be independent power from Black communities that’s able to push back against the lack of accountability from the legislative arena right now.”
With police accountability being a significant concern for Black communities, this funding instills hope for a safer future, free from the looming threat of police violence.
“We are not going to be free right until all communities and, most significantly, Black communities can live without fear of violence and retribution at the hands of our government at the hands of our police,” said Ching.