Social Justice

After a full day of leading workshops on how to talk about race thoughtfully and deliberately that showed an overrepresentation of employees of color and an underrepresentation of white employees, Ijeoma Oluo shares her thoughts on how "so often the white attendees have decided for themselves what will be discussed, what they will hear, what they will learn."

In a recent Nonprofit AF blog post, Vu Le states that the more privilege people have, the more likely they are to complain about the lack of solutions proposed. He calls it "solutions privilege,” "the privilege of expecting solutions that would align with one’s worldview and not challenge one’s privilege."

Each year, Eastern State Penitentiary, which was built as a punishing fortress in 1829 outside Philadelphia, gets hundreds of visitors to explore its grounds. At some point, tackling the site's history, as The New York Times reported, was not enough and addressing mass incarceration as a crisis in the United States was the answer.

The Highlander Research and Education Center, a civil rights center in Tennessee founded in 1932, stated that a fire that burned its main office last Friday may have been intentionally set, after a “symbol connected to the white power movement” was found spray-painted in the parking lot next to the rubble of the building, as The New York Times reported.

Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) announced Interchange, a new pilot program created to strengthen communities and individual artists within the organization's region by supporting artist-led projects focused on social impact.

Successful cultural organizations masterfully manage contributed and earned income. This income mix can include corporate grants, endowment income, foundation grants, government grants, individual donations, membership fees, ticket sales, and unrelated business income (National Endowment for the Arts 2012). Although Alicia Schatteman and Ben Bingle (2017) have suggested that government funding is the most stable of these sources of income, foundations have played a significant role in the development of the US cultural sector (Renz 1994; Negley 2017).

The door is heavy. I don’t remember if it is steel or wood, but it takes effort to open. We are a small group of four. A few more will join our group shortly. I lead the way inside. They said not to wear blue. I keep it simple — a black dress and gray pants that come just above my ankle. And black boots. My usual.

The Uncertainty of Place

The Pittsburgh Foundation and New Voices for Reproductive Justice launched recently the Social Justice Rapid Response Fund, a new grantmaking program aimed at providing support for activists and civic organizations in underserved communities across Allegheny County, in the southwest of Pennsylvania, reported NEXTpittsburgh.

The Art in Resistance Fellowship, established by artists and changemakers "to simultaneously support artists and movements for social change at a time when there is a profound need to lift up beauty, solidarity, and resistance" announced the awarding of its first fellowship to Dignidad Rebelde, graphic arts collaboration between Oakland-based artists Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes.