Social Justice

“To create a just and pluralist society, we need to reimagine systems and transform culture.”

"Drive across the Midwest and you’ll find cities and interstates peppered with anti-abortion billboards," said author Cinnamon Janzer. Thus stemmed the Minnesota Billboard Project, born from a, "St. Paul couple [who] decided to take countering the anti-choice messaging into their own hands."

“A new effort to help grant makers change the way they work so they can better support Black-led nonprofits was announced today. Abundance is a collaboration between three Chicago-area grant makers, Chicago Beyond, the Grand Victoria Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.”

“Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust’s nearly $141 million in grantmaking during the last half of 2021 is a keen expression of both its legacy of long-term strategic investment in Maricopa County’s (AZ) resilience and its unique ability to respond powerfully to unfolding crises,” announced in the Business Wire.

“Grants management professionals are strategically positioned to influence a funder’s racial equity and racial justice funding. But in three decades of working in and with foundations, I have consistently seen a pattern where people serving in these roles are excluded from these conversations as a matter of institutional habit,” explains Lori Villarosa, Founder and Executive Director, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Justice.

Forecast Public Art announced the Public Art for Racial Justice Fund to, “provide much needed guidance, coaching and technical assistance to artists and communities as they undertake the complex task of confronting racial inequities...”

For Richmond-based artist Austin “Auz” Miles, the impact of her work is right there in the communities where she paints,” reports Nia Norris in NextCity. Elaborating, “Miles is part of a collective called All City Art Club whose mission is to bring murals to the Southside.”

"We are thrilled and delighted to be launching two new Artists At Work (AAW) programs in the Mississippi Delta and Greater Chattanooga Thrive Region," AAW shared in an announcement earlier this month. "We are honored to be championing these artists and their communities as they work together on projects that highlight the positive impacts of artistic civic engagement."

Robin D. G. Kelley shares "Back to the Future: Complex Movements Make Revolution," an essay from memory on a conversation with 2022 Knight Arts + Tech Fellows Complex Movements in Shift Space 2.0, a publication exploring new media landscapes. Kelley recollects, "Radical philosopher Grace Lee Boggs (1915–2015) was the catalyst for Complex Movements, which took its name in 2010 after listening to her invoke quantum theory to explain new directions in organizing."