November 27, 2015

Support Minneapolis Protesters

Last updated December 2, 2015. Please check back regularly for updates.

DONATE to Black Lives Matter Minneapolis: Please donate to help support their efforts with bail, legal support, and other supplies.

November 27, 2015

Dear Community,

In the past 10 days Minneapolis has experienced horrific acts of violence, first with the shooting of Jamar Clark, a 24 year old unarmed black man, who was killed by the Minneapolis police just over a week ago. Then, on Monday night, in the wake of an ongoing peaceful occupation demanding justice for Jamar Clark outside of Minneapolis’ 4th Police Precinct, white supremacists shot at peaceful protesters, injuring five protesters. This is an incredibly traumatic time for our city and especially for the lead organizers/organizations who have been strategically organizing around the clock for the past 10 days. Many of you have asked how you can help. Thank you. Please read on about what support is most urgently needed. Headwaters is proud to continue to stand with our grantee partners, Black Lives Matter Minneapolis— leading the efforts to maintain a peaceful 24-7 occupation, organizing marches, events, and meeting with policy makers from the Governor to the Department of Justice. Organizing alongside them, is our grantee partner, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC)—the NOC office has been used as the organizing hub and meeting space for BLM-MPLS, offering a safe space for meetings, press conferences, healing, warmth, electricity, covering printing costs, access to the internet, and more. Both groups are working together to demand justice for the killing of Jamar Clark and to address some of the worst-in-the-nation disparities between African Americans and whites. Their fight is not just for one man, but for the thousands of black and brown people who unjustifiably die at the hands of law enforcement and as a result of our broken systems. Protestors have responded with courage and love. In response to the shootings on Monday night, over 2,000 people joined together to march for justice and peace from North Minneapolis to City Hall in downtown Minneapolis. We’ve spoken with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and Neighborhoods Organizing for Change about their immediate needs. We know there will be short and long term needs to sustain and grow this work, but we want to let you know about ways you can help right now. We think of this as “rapid emergency response” for social justice organizing.

Current Needs: Harriet’s Apothecary Healers. Covers costs, including, travel and lodging, to bring several nationally renowned Black healers to work with our community. Cost Estimate: $10,000

Material Needs to support on-going organizing: Food, flyers, pens/paper, clipboards, email access, phones, non-violent direct action training, funeral costs, transportation costs. Cost Estimate: $20,000

Stipends to Organizers-in-Need: Hourly compensation for community members (without a financial safety net) now serving as organizations. Cost: $8,000 Because we see this as “rapid emergency response” social justice funding, we advise you to send donations directly to Black Lives Matter, noting “Emergency Response-Social Justice Organizing” in the comment field so funds can be directed accordingly. If donations require a 501 c3, please make donations to Headwaters Foundation for Justice, noting “Emergency Response-Social Justice Organizing” in the comment field so all funds can be directed accordingly.

Please feel free to call my cell phone with any questions, 612-822-8966. We all have a role to play. “We want them to stop killing us. We have rung the bells loud. We are not going to take this anymore.” Lena Gardner, member of Black Lives Matter Minneapolis. Headwaters’ Giving Project participant and donor-activist Emma Buechs recently wrote from the 4th Police Precinct:  In these moments of fear and violence I am so grateful for the power of community, for the strength in hope, for the energy of song and dance and drums, for the smart and persistent organizing of @blacklivesmattermpls, and for the belief that we can and will win, that we can create a system not ruled by white supremacy, that we can be liberated if we all stand together.

With deep appreciation, and in solidarity,

David Nicholson

Executive Director Headwaters Foundation for Justice

 

Foundation Statement in Support of Minneapolis Protesters

Dear Funders for Justice Colleagues,

In the past several weeks, we have all seen violence and fear rock our cities, our nation, and the global community. In my own city of Minneapolis, early Sunday morning police shot Jamar Clark, a 24 year old unarmed black man. While we might not yet know all the specifics surrounding the killing of Jamar, what we do know is that this is an all too familiar occurrence in our nation. From Ferguson to Baltimore to New York and everywhere in between, our structures and systems are in urgent need of change. Race and racism are at the center of so many of our broken institutions: policing, health care, education, housing, and so many more.

At Headwaters, we fund groups organizing for justice and equity. Our grantees are in it for the long haul, and they are bending the arc of justice with each step they take whether through direct action or policy advocacy. We are honored to stand with our grantee partner, Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, and other organizations, such as the NAACP and Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, as they courageously organize for #justice4jamar. Their fight is not just for one man, but for the thousands of black and brown people who unjustifiably die at the hands of law enforcement and as a result of our broken systems. “We want them to stop killing us. We have rung the bells loud. We are not going to take this anymore.” Lena Gardner, member of Black Lives Matter Minneapolis.

Watch the videos, look at the photos, follow the work of Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, and contribute resources. We all have a role to play. Late last night from the 4th police precinct in Minneapolis, Headwaters’ Giving Project participant and donor-activist Emma Buechs wrote: We are not leaving until our demands are met. In these moments of fear and violence I am so grateful for the power of community, for the strength in hope, for the energy of song and dance and drums, for the smart and persistent organizing of @blacklivesmattermpls, and for the belief that we can and will win, that we can create a system not ruled by white supremacy, that we can be liberated if we all stand together. With deep appreciation, and in solidarity,

David Nicholson

Executive Director

Headwaters Foundation for Justice

 

Press Release from Black Lives Matter Minneapolis:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 19, 2015

Black Lives Matter Minneapolis Calls for Civil Rights Investigation into Abuses of Peaceful Protesters

Community members vow to continue occupation of 4th precinct until video of the killing of Jamar Clark is released

A statement from Black Lives Matter Minneapolis:

Last night, community members showed incredible restraint in the face of militarized aggression during a time of painful mourning of the killing of Jamar Clark, an unarmed black man witnesses say was handcuffed and shot in the head “execution style”. We have, and will continue to call for Mayor Hodges and Chief Harteau to ask the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to immediately release the tapes of Jamar’s killing. We demand an immediate end to the harassment of peaceful demonstrators, and call for civil rights investigation into police violence against protesters.

Some of the egregious violations of civil rights documented last night include:

  • An officer punched a young woman in the face before macing a crowd of people
  • Police pointed potentially lethal weapons in the face of numerous peaceful protesters including Congressman Keith Ellison’s son.
  • Police maced scores of people including WCCO journalist and Northsider Reg Chapman.
  • Police shot a 14 year old child with a marker bullet. At 2:45am Police advanced into camp, tore ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter banner down, & retreated behind the barricade again
  • Police made false claims that pepper spray was coming from protesters not them.

We understand the frustration of community members who may take actions not sanctioned by our group; this is a time of grief and rage and we remain committed to nonviolent direct action. As has always been the case, our members remained committed to peaceful protest even in the face of growing escalation. We want to thank Council members Bender, Cano, Gordon, Andrew Johnson, Glidden, Rep. Dehn, and the hundreds of community members who joined us last night. However, we are disappointed in the actions of Mayor Hodges, Chief Harteau, Minneapolis City Council President Barb Johnson, and 4th precinct Council Member Blong Yang for their lack of commitment to the welfare of Black residents in Minneapolis and beyond.

This incident is receiving international press coverage because it is emblematic of the larger problem of a culture of policing in America where Black lives do not matter. We call on City council and city leadership to take dramatic and bold action to stop another shooting death of an unarmed Black person from happening. Despite attacks on the protestors and community, we're still here and more determined than ever to get justice for Jamar, and to see the video footage of his killing. Please join us at 5:00pm today for an action as we continue the occupation at the 4th Precinct. ###

Black Lives Matter Minneapolis is a group of Black and allied organizers in Minneapolis, Minn. working in solidarity with the national Black Lives Matter movement. 

 
 
DOJ: Protect Black Activists from White Vigilante Violence
 
“We Cannot Live without Our Lives”
—Audre Lorde, Black author, poet, activist, and academic
 
The Black Lives Matter Network stands in solidarity with the five members of the #BlackLivesMatter Minneapolis chapter that were shot on Monday night. All five are reportedly in stable condition. Protestors were shot as they attempted to move a group of apparently armed white men away from a peaceful protest over the fatal shooting of unarmed Black 24-year-old man Jamar Clark by a police officer.
 
While activists on the ground at the #4thPrecinctShutDown are shaken, they are not derailed in their efforts. They will remain at the scene, occupying the precinct, until justice for Jamar Clark and his family is served.
 
The war on Black lives is escalating, and it’s time for President Obama to intervene. The Black Lives Matter Network urgently calls upon the Department of Justice to investigate this shooting as a hate crime.
 
This shooting of Black activists by white vigilantes in Minneapolis is a symptom of a much larger problem—that while the homegrown domestic terrorism of white supremacists is alive and well in 2015, it too often lives in the shadows of media coverage dominated by the international terrorism of so-called religious extremists.
 
But, organized white American vigilantism too, is terrorism.
 
It is a terrifying kind of terrorism where the “radicalization” of white supremacists is allowed to grow in plain sight, erased by an invisibility cloak of media neglect, endorsed by politicians, egged on by online trolls, and entrenched by an anti-Black state and civil society.
 
When white males of the far right carry out violent attacks, they are typically described in media, and by neocons and Republicans, as independent actors, rather than members of well-organized terrorist movements. In fact, a recent study found that, despite Presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s desire to increase targeted surveillance of Black activists and Muslim communities, white supremacists are actually more dangerous to America than foreign terrorists. Most terrorist activity has come not from Muslims or from Black people, but from a combination of radical Christians, white supremacists, and far-right militia groups.
 
The Black Lives Matter Network also calls upon the Department of Justice to investigate the Minneapolis police department’s negligent and incompetent conduct in response to this crime. Instead of responding appropriately to secure the safety of protestors who had previously reported credible threats made by white supremacists, the concerns of protestors were ignored. Instead of immediately assisting those injured, Minneapolis police maced protestors who were attempting to record events as they occurred. Rather than take witness statements, Minneapolis police mocked the suffering of Black activists, insisting that by demanding answers in the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black teenager, protestors had brought the violence upon themselves. Blaming the targets of racist violence is an old trope, but one we must actively and wholeheartedly reject. Our right to organize in defense of Black lives is inherent and inalienable, and beyond the jurisdiction of any law enforcement or white hate group.
 
White vigilantism is a persistent threat that exists to uphold the war on Black lives, reinforce existing racial power dynamics as the status quo, and terrify Black people into silence. But we will not be silent in the face of this long-held extension of state violence.
 
We will continue the occupation of the 4th precinct. We will not be intimidated by white supremacy. We will not bow down to white vigilante terror. Just as our ancestors in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s sang, we ain’t gonna let white supremacy turn us around.
 
Not now, not ever.
 
We demand #Justice4Jamar, justice for the five victims of this racist hate crime, and all victims of police violence
 
October 14, 2020

Surdna Foundation Stepping Up for Racial Justice

Don Chen, President of Surdna Foundation, announces the foundation's plans to increase its grantmaking by $36 million to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color leaders, organizations, and networks most affected by systemic racism. This post was originally published here on the foundation's website.

Don was part of the 2019-2020 Philanthropy Forward: Leadership for Change Fellowship cohort, a joint initiative of Neighborhood Funders Group and The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. Surdna Foundation, a member of NFG, seeks to foster sustainable communities in the United States guided by principles of social justice and distinguished by healthy environments, strong local economies, and thriving cultures.

Across the U.S., millions have stepped up in support of Black lives and against systemic anti-Black racism. Today, I want to tell you how the Surdna Foundation is stepping up, too.

Meeting the Moment

Racial and social justice has long been at the heart of every grant we make. But the pandemic, economic crisis, and our nation’s long-needed reckoning with racial injustices call upon all of us to do more and to do better.

In response, Surdna is increasing its grantmaking for racial justice by approximately $36 million over the next three years. These new funds will intensify our support for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color leaders, organizations, and networks most affected by systemic racism.

Our goal is to give our grantee partners breathing room to respond to today’s urgent needs and to sustain their work toward addressing deep, structural anti-Black racism to realize just and sustainable communities in which everyone can thrive.

Combined with our annual grantmaking of roughly $41.5 million per year, this increased spending will bring Surdna’s total financial commitment to racial justice to approximately $160 million between now and the end of 2023.

How Will the Funds be Granted?

As a longtime funder of racial and social justice, Surdna will initially use additional grant dollars to support existing grantee partners, including:

  • Artists and arts organizations that are particularly threatened by revenue losses during the pandemic and those working with their communities to imagine and prototype a more racially just future.
  • Grassroot organizations and networks working at the intersection of racial, economic, and climate justice.
  • Businesses and entrepreneurs of color in need of access to capital and a runway to imagine, innovate, and generate wealth in their communities.
  • Efforts to abolish youth prisons and foster safe communities.
  • Program- and mission-related investments that extend the impact of the Foundation beyond grantmaking.

Our Inclusive Economies, Sustainable Environments, and Thriving Cultures program teams, alongside our Impact Investing staff and the Andrus Family Fund, will work within their existing strategies to make investments that support previously identified ideas developed with grantees and partners. Opportunities for new grants and grantee partners will be developed at a later date.

Each year, we will determine the exact amount of increased spending, estimated to total $36 million over three years, by an annual valuation of our endowment on December 31st. In keeping with trust-based philanthropic practices, we will listen to our grantee partners’ needs and award multiyear, core support grants whenever appropriate.

Fulfilling Our Mission

As an institution working to foster just and sustainable communities, we know that thriving cultures, inclusive economies, and sustainable environments simply are not possible without directly addressing structural racism. Sustainable communities must include access to fair opportunities and the processes that shape our lives and communities.

For over five generations, Surdna has been governed largely by descendants of John E. Andrus, who founded the foundation in 1917. As Peter B. Benedict II, Surdna’s board chair and fifth-generation family member said, “Not only is stepping up our funding at this moment the right thing to do, but it also underscores the importance of our social justice mission.”

On a practical level, we fulfill our racial and social justice mission in three ways: 1) programmatic grantmaking, 2) offering support to grantees beyond the grant money, and 3) program- and mission-related investments, including leveraging our $1 billion endowment to influence other investors to do impact investing that will result in more just, sustainable markets and outcomes. We intentionally invest in communities of color, supporting those that have historically been underfunded, and make impact investments that are not only profitable but good for people and the planet.

Centering Our Grantee Partners

For years, the Surdna Foundation has supported solutions to dismantling the policies, behaviors, and cultural drivers that have produced racial injustices over generations. The greatest reward of my job is seeing the transformative work of our grantee partners. Here are just a few examples of initiatives we’ve had the privilege to support this year:

Imagining a More Racially Just Future

Artists can help us radically imagine and build a more just future in which we all can thrive. Take, for example, Designing Justice+Designing Spaces (DJDS), a nonprofit real estate and architecture firm with a mission to end mass incarceration and structural inequality. At the heart of its work is the question: What would a world without prisons look like? DJDS works with communities and those in the criminal justice system to imagine and design healing alternatives to prisons like the new Center for Equity in Atlanta.

The NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through its Radical Imagination grant program, it will fund six Indigenous artists/culture bearers to imagine, design, and create projects that propose solutions to our most intractable societal problems. NDN Collective is one of our Thriving Cultures program’s 11 re-granting partners supporting artists of color to advance racial justice within their local communities.

Caring for the Land and One Another

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental and climate inequity—such as flooding, land loss, and environmental toxins—and have the experience, expertise, and powerful solutions to resolve these inequities. To realize healthier, more equitable outcomes, our Sustainable Environments grantee partners seek to increase the capacity of communities of color to self-determine the ownership, control, and stewardship of land and infrastructure assets.

The National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA) promotes Black food and land, by increasing the visibility of Black leadership, and building power in our food systems and land stewardship. NBFJA has facilitated seed grants to BIPOC members across the country for food security, community wellness, and cooperation.

The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is an alliance of grassroots Indigenous peoples whose mission it is to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth from contamination and exploitation by strengthening, maintaining, and respecting Indigenous teachings and natural laws. In response to the pandemic, IEN has been resourcing frontline community-based mutual aid organizations and providing immediate relief to small business owners in need. IEN’s extensive grassroots network of Indigenous peoples has connected community members with basic needs like food and water, healthcare, and preventive measures, and through their PPE partnership has distributed over 190,000 masks to the hardest-hit areas of Indian Country.

Creating Inclusive Economies

People should have power, choice, and ownership over the economy no matter their race or ethnicity. Yet, the Black and white wealth divide is as wide today as it was in 1968. Our Inclusive Economies grantee partners are working to close the gap.

One Fair Wage is a national coalition, campaign, and organization seeking to lift millions of tipped and subminimum wage workers nationally out of poverty by requiring all employers to pay the full minimum wage with fair, nondiscriminatory tips on top. As restaurants and other establishments close nationwide due to the pandemic, One Fair Wage launched an Emergency Relief Fund to provide assistance to restaurant workers, delivery drivers, and other tipped workers and service workers who are bearing the economic brunt of this crisis. Its members are also mobilizing voters to make a fair minimum wage a reality across the country.

Common Future is a network of leaders seeking to shift capital into historically marginalized communities, uplift local leaders, and accelerate equitable economies. From bridging the wealth gap for Black entrepreneurs to ensuring communities have a final say over the development that impacts their neighborhoods, Common Future’s leaders shed light on how to rebuild economies that work for everyone.

Investing for Impact

Investing in entrepreneurs of color is one of the most effective ways to drive job and wealth creation and address long-standing racial inequities. To that end, we make impact investments that provide capital to fund innovative, market-based approaches that address systemic challenges while generating social and financial returns.

For example, The Impact America Fund (IAF) makes early-stage investments in tech-driven businesses that create ownership and opportunity within marginalized communities. The fund’s founder, Kesha Cash, is one of the few Black women in venture capital and understands that traditional venture capital funds often overlook prioritizing and supporting entrepreneurs of color. IAF helps founders get traction with institutional investors, who often don’t have the expertise or lived experience in these communities to appreciate the huge opportunities at hand.

VamosVentures is another investment firm that sees tech as an essential ingredient for communities of color to thrive. VamosVentures, founded by Marcos Gonzalez, invests in diverse teams with a focus on Latinx entrepreneurs. The fund supports diverse-owned companies with capital, commercial opportunities, and strategic guidance with the goals of generating returns and social impact through wealth creation, social mobility, and tech-driven solutions to challenges persistent in communities of color.

Unlocking Potential by Ending Youth Prisons

The Andrus Family Fund envisions a just society in which vulnerable youth have more than one opportunity for a good life. As part of this vision, many of AFF’s grantee partners are working toward a world without youth prisons.

Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ) unlocks the leadership of formerly incarcerated young people to dream beyond bars. Through youth programs, life coaching, policy organizing, and restorative retreats and trainings, CURYJ helps young people lead the way in transforming their communities and investing in their healing, activism, and aspirations.

Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) is an unprecedented campaign to end discriminatory and abusive policing practices in New York and build a lasting movement that promotes public safety and reduces reliance on policing. Running diverse coalitions of more than 200 organizations, CPR works closely with those most unfairly targeted by the NYPD to build accountability and increase transparency. These are just two of AFF’s grantee partners that are shining a light on injustice and lifting up ways to foster safe, thriving communities for all.

Contributing to Racial Justice

This is a year for the history books. Every day seems to bring a new challenge. At the same time, I’m grateful. Having spent a career working to advance just and sustainable communities, I’ve often wondered what it would take to get a critical mass of leading voices to wake up to long-standing racially unjust conditions and demand transformative change. I believe that moment has arrived. By intensifying our support, the Surdna Foundation hopes to contribute to greater sustained momentum for change.

I look forward to sharing more with you in the coming months about our grantees and what the Surdna Foundation is thinking, doing, and learning.

Onward,

Don Chen
President
Surdna Foundation

November 13, 2020

Strike Watch - Election 2020: Workers Redefine the Map, as Corporate Tech Pours Millions to Undermine Rights

While the public eye (rightfully) centered on the US presidency this election, worker-led organizing made tremendous waves across the country in ballot initiative, issue-based wins and get out the vote mobilization, including in closely-watched swing states. Corporations and the ultra-wealthy also pushed their agendas of racialized and gendered inequality ahead, most notably California’s anti-labor rights "gig" worker proposition. While the full significance of the election is still unfurling, the results point to the power of long-term, worker-led organizing led by unions, place-based worker organizations, and abolitionist movements. These efforts belie any easy answers from red or blue maps - but instead point to the critical ways intersectional movements build across the losses, lessons, and confrontations with corporate agendas that line the hard road to ground-breaking wins.

#RedforEd Returns, Victorious

In Arizona, voters boosted school spending and, specifically, teacher salaries through a 3.5% tax on those making more than $250,000. Proposition 208 came as a direct response to teacher labor organizing, especially the 2018 Red for Ed strikes in Arizona, a wave of teacher’s actions that started in anti-labor states like Arizona and eventually reached Democratic-led, but austerity-stripped cities. The 2018 Arizona strike brought a 20% raise for teachers but did not meet demands for school staff funding, guarantees for raises or spending to meet national standards. But organizing among teachers did not flag, including a more recent set of strike actions to challenge early re-opening of schools in the COVID-19 crisis and the fight for Proposition 208, accompanied by a jump in teacher union membership 10%. Similar measures to increase taxes (including via cannabis legalization) to boost school spending won across Wisconsin localities and in other states, including a new tax measure to fund Universal Pre-K in Colorado. 

Fight for 15 Breaks Through in the South

Florida surprised many when it passed a minimum wage of $15, with a significant 60% of the vote and a transformative bump from the current minimum of $8.56. While actively challenged by the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, the wage hike was advanced by an extensive door knocking this election season and long-term campaign of strikes and actions since 2012 by the Fight for $15 coalition. Spearheaded in part by SEIU and including the Sierra Club Florida, Florida Immigration Coalition, the Poor People’s Campaign, and Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) chapters, the Fight for $15 had recently been an active part of the Strike for Black Lives, featured in our recent Strike Watch.  Get Out the Vote efforts by the multi-racial, multi-issue New Florida Majority coalition, tied to national Seed the Vote 501(c)(4) and PAC networks in swing states, also pointed voters to the amendment, part of the latest in the NFM labor-community coalition’s efforts on worker’s rights. The Florida win tiptoe on the heels of two voter-approved Southern minimum wage hikes in 2018 in Missouri and Arkansas, that won by more than 62% and 68% respectively.

Making Paid Sick and Medical Leave a Public Good

Colorado residents turned out at 57% to support paid family and medical leave for 12 weeks through Proposition 118. Voters pulled off what legislators had failed to do in multiple sessions, with lawmakers having faced some of the most expensive lobbying efforts in 2019 in Colorado against the bill by local Chambers of Commerce and corporate interests. Through a pay-in system by workers and businesses, the new measure covers up to 12 weeks for childbirth, adoption, medical emergencies in their families, a family member’s active-duty military service, and reasons related to abuse and sexual assault – with a higher pay rate coverage for lower-wage employees. The structure shows the influence of growing, more comprehensive organizing on this issue, in that the policy is inclusive of all workers and publicly-managed, in ways prior state-level bills have not been.

Proposition 22 and the Challenge of Corporate Tech Spending

Speaking of expensive measures, there was also devastating news on the ballot initiative front for workers – most notably with the passage of Proposition 22 in California. The $200 million dollar effort by Uber (now merged with Postmates), Lyft, Doordash and other tech corporations that rely on vulnerable low-wage service labor was the most expensive ballot measure in California history. The law now excludes app-tied workers from the state minimum to a pay guarantee that only amount to $5.64 an hour, limited health benefits based on hourly requirements, and exclusion from NLRB collective bargaining, worker’s compensation and other rights. It is also sealed with an unprecedented provision requiring 7/8th legislative majority to overturn. Researchers and organizers have noted the dangerous move to create a permanent “third category” exemption to labor law will most hurt mostly older Black, Latinx, indigenous, immigrant and women workers  for generations to come – similar to the 1930s New Deal exclusions of domestic and farm labor. While Lyft and other companies are signaling an interest in a vaguely-defined relationship with bigger labor unions  via “sectoral bargaining,” organizers have pointed to this as a trojan horse that would further undermine worker’s voice, and usher in another era of labor suppression similar to company unions of the pre-New Deal era and the 1947 post-Taft Hartley “business unionism” era targeting labor power.

In initial assessments, the lack of restrictions on corporate proposition spending opened the door for massive spending on a deceptive Yes on 22 campaign. Expensive, constant TV and radio ads included groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the manipulation of racial justice language and data (via spurious groups like the “Berkeley Research Group”) - not to mention the gig companies’ looming threat to leave California after courts enforced AB 5 this Fall. Some analysis points to the fact companies manipulated the app itself to make it appear that the workers picking up passengers or dropping off deliveries were supporting the corporate measure. Pro-22 ads had to be clicked through to access app functions – also questionable given the use of this private data for political purposes. (And in the middle of a pandemic-fueled food and restaurant delivery surge, Door Dash and others even offered stamped bags “Yes on 22.”)

Yet undeniable is the importance of continued organizing by Rideshare Drivers United, Gig Workers Rising, Gig Workers Collective and others – who have gained ground creatively in a terrain where they face the deep challenges reaching workers invisibly scattered across cities and rural regions. These groups’ effect on mobilizing the public in the Bay Area of California led to vote totals decisively against Prop 22 in tech stronghold Silicon Valley. Far from done fighting, gig worker-led organizations are now gearing up for battles across the US for the future of work that centers workers.

The Future Defined by Workers

Across the US this election, simplified mappings of red and blue fell apart in the face of investment in long-term deep, “ground game” organizing across labor and community organizations – from Black-women led groups like Georgia STAND-UP to Navajo and Latinx-youth led organizing by groups like LUCHA in Arizona. Often-invisible networks of non-funded grassroots organizing groups, including those tied to the Black Lives Matter uprisings, also mattered in building the energy and momentum among youth and marginalized voters. Cutting across these, too, was a massive in-person effort by labor unions like UNITE HERE (including numerous unemployed Black and brown hospitality workers) in key states where unions have ground presence.

Tweet from Isaac Bryan, @ib2_real, Director of Public Policy at UCLA's Ralph J Bunche Center, and Co-Chair of the Reimagine LA coalition that sponsored LA's succesful Measure J

If there is a consistent theme among the ballot struggles discussed above, it is that worker-led organizing that cuts across community and labor organizations - and the willingness to step up actions, from teacher’s to fast food strikes - can pay off big. Direct confrontation with corporate or legislative actors is an inevitable part of this process, as McDonalds' workers in Florida or teachers in Arizona can also share. And there are no campaigns that don’t face losses and setbacks. Much of the above organizing faced (well-funded) roadblocks and lost policy fights at times but kept building and learning – much as the gig worker movement is now doing.

This lesson was also reinforced by powerful gains in local measures on other intersecting issues of racial and economic justice, such as the significant Measure J in Los Angeles County supported by Black Lives Matter-LA, Justice LA coalition, Youth Justice Coalition and a wider network created called Reimagine LA. (The tweet featured to the left is from Reimagine LA co-chair Isaac Bryan, Director of Public Policy at UCLA's Ralph J Bunche Center.) Measure  J- part of a local progressive sweep - now permanently sets aside 10% of the County budget for alternatives to incarceration, including job programs serving Black and brown communities. Cities as varied as Columbus, Ohio and Portland, Oregon passed police oversight measures, while Philadelphia banned stop-and-frisk decisively. At the state level, California abolition movements including Communities United for a Responsible Budget stopped algorithmic bail calculations, prison spending, and other attempts to scale back decarceration, while also advancing rights for parolee voting (legislation written by formerly-incarcerated residents). Needless to say, none of these shifts - like the multi-year battle to oust District Attorney Jackie Lacey in Los Angeles - were won overnight, or without tensions and confrontations.

Georgia STAND-UP Director Deborah Scott's call in a recent Vox interview speak volumes to the nature of long-term organizing that is transforming the political landscape – and tangibly shifting workers’ lives: “Everything can’t be online for us because there’s a certain level of our population that does not respond there,” Scott said, describing a tactics that included safe door-knocking, protests, and reaching those seeking direct services. Building strategy means “making sure people really listen to the wisdom that we have because we’ve lived it.”