People of Color

Asian-Americans Arrested At Paul Ryan’s Office Pushing For Dream Act

November 20, 2017 Kimberly Yam, huffingtonpost.com Resist! DREAM Act, People of Color, Undocumented

By Kimberly Yam for The Huffington Post - The push for the Dream Act, a longstanding wish of immigration reformers, has grown all the stronger since the Trump administration announced it would terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program back in September. DACA was shielding some 800,000 young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Some 21,000 of the 154,000 who were eligible to renew their DACA protections at least one more time were not able to do so by the Oct. 5 deadline. Congress now has until March 2018 to find some other way to protect those young people from being deported. While most Dreamers hail from Latin American countries, there were many Asian-Americans who were eligible for DACA as well. Some 16,000 undocumented Asian youth were shielded by the Obama-era program. And currently, there are about 1.7 million undocumented Asian immigrants in the U.S. The group represents the fastest growing demographic among undocumented immigrants.

People Of Color Fight For Place In NY’s Money-Driven Arts Ecosystem

October 11, 2017 Maya Chung, www.indypendent.org Create! Art, New York (NY), People of Color

By Maya Chung for The Indypendent - A small number of legacy arts institutions are sweeping up vast shares of public art funding, while newer immigrant and ethnic arts groups in New York City are clamoring for the remaining resources. A new coalition of artists and advocates is pushing the city to increase access to arts dollars for those who have been left out. The group has put together a 17-page document called the People’s Cultural Plan to serve as a set of policy recommendations for the city government which, if implemented, would more definitively benefit smaller arts groups — often grassroots organizations run by immigrant or minority artists. The document comes in response to a cultural plan unveiled by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in July 2017. Called CreateNYC, the plan aims to “serve as a roadmap to a more inclusive, equitable, and resilient cultural ecosystem, in which all residents have a stake.” Those behind the People’s Cultural Plan argue that CreateNYC isn’t doing enough. And access to funding is where smaller groups suffer. According to CreateNYC, in fiscal-year 2017, $111 million of the $177 million Department of Cultural Affairs budget was granted to just 33 large institutions. These organizations are members of the Cultural Institutions Group, made up of culturally significant, generally well-established public institutions. This imbalance of funding comes at the expense of smaller, often immigrant or minority-run arts groups, which then face stiff competition for the remaining resources.

President Of Police-Chiefs Association Apologizes

October 19, 2016 Monique Judge, www.theroot.com Resist! People of Color, Police

By Monique Judge for The Root - The president of a police-chiefs association apologized Monday for the role that police have played in society’s “historical mistreatment of communities of color.” Speaking at the annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego, the association’s president, Terrence Cunningham, said that when it comes to how officers relate to minority groups, they cannot change the past, but they must change the future.

Communities Of Color Are Over-Policed

August 11, 2016 Shaun King, www.nydailynews.com Educate! People of Color, Police

By Shaun King for Daily News - On the evening of Nov. 26, 2013 Baton Rouge area police arrested a 38-year-old black man named Ervin Edwards. Edwards, who struggled with mental illness and drug use, was also partially deaf and battled the effects of obesity and high blood pressure. Police were called to a local convenience store when he and his longtime girlfriend were overheard in an argument. By the time law enforcement arrived, the argument had long since been over. Ervin Edwards, though, was sagging his pants, and police had a problem with it. In Port Allen, La. sagging pants are illegal.

Watching The Rails: One Community’s Quest For Safety

May 23, 2016 Kathleen Sutcliffe, www.earthjustice.org Resist! Fossil Fuels, People of Color

By Kathleen Sutcliffe for Earth Justice - WHEN FOSSIL FUEL POLLUTERS NEED A PLACE TO DO THEIR DIRTIEST AND MOST DANGEROUS WORK, they tend to locate their operations in places where they believe people have less power, often in low-income communities or communities of color. Faced with a deadly new threat, residents in one predominately African-American community are organizing their neighbors and allies from far and wide—building the power to take on a Fortune 500 company and complacent regulators.

Black Churches On The Front Lines Of Environmental Justice

August 24, 2015 Lindsay Abrams, www.salon.com Resist! Climate Change, Faith, People of Color

By Lindsay Abrams in Salon - Low-income and communities of color are on the front lines of climate change. They have, for that matter, been disproportionately shouldering the burden of our reliance on dirty energy since the beginning: nearly 40 percent of the people living and breathing in the vicinity of coal-fired power plants are people of color; not unrelatedly, asthma rates for African Americans are 35 percent higher than they are for Caucasians. Fighting climate change, and the energy revolution that doing so requires, is for many such communities a question of environmental justice. It’s also, Rev. Abrose Carroll tells Salon, an incredible opportunity. Carroll is the founder of Green the Church, a movement that’s “tapping into the power and purpose of the black church” as a moral and social leader on climate issues.

This Is How You Can Support Trans Women Of Color Right Now

June 8, 2015 Princess Harmony Rodriguez, www.blackgirldangerous.org Educate! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), People of Color, Racial Justice, Transgender

By Princess Harmony Rodriguez in Black Girl Dangerous - On 5/18, I saw heartbreaking news flood my Facebook timeline. Philadelphia’s committed body of trans activists, many of them of color, were talking about a trans woman’s murder. Her name was, and still is, Londyn Chanel. She was 21 years old. There are people with boots on the ground in Philadelphia, and in other major cities throughout the country, who do the most difficult and emotionally draining work in the fight for our community to stay alive. These trans and cis activists reach out to trans women of color and provide services to us, organize rallies when we are murdered, and give us spaces where we can simply be allowed to exist in peace. Not everyone is cut out for the work these people do, because they often have to deal with violence, death, and illness. It’s emotionally draining and requires a level of self-sacrifice that most people can’t get to. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; self-care is important and if you know you can’t do something like that it’s best that you find other ways to be helpful. Here are some things that you can do to support this work:

Climate Activism: Erasure Of Queer & Trans* People Of Color

May 9, 2015 Ceci Pineda, www.bluestockingsmag.com Strategize! Environmental Justice, People of Color, Queer, Racial Justice, Trans

There is a dangerous silence around the impacts of climate change on our communities within academia, the climate movement, and even our own work to confront violence in our communities. In academia, there is scant research, literature, and scholarly discussion delving into how climate change will impact QT* communities, and in particular QT* communities of color. Yet across the board, the scarce literature that exists highlights how QT* communities are disproportionately impacted. Nonetheless, there is little to no acknowledgment of how climate change disparately impacts us or of our role in the climate movement. We are pushed to the back of marches and the visible narratives that arise linking queers and climate change erase our experiences and realities as QT*POCs.

Daily movement news and resources