To a nation in turmoil, ordinary citizens cry out: What can be done?
In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, protests of police brutality against African Americans have erupted in all 50 states, and have even spread globally. Activists and citizens are taking to the streets to demand justice for George Floyd and an end to the long-standing systemic racism and inequality plaguing American society.
A key message of the protests is a call to action — for everyone. Social media has been flooded with posts and threads providing ways people can help.
Below is a list WhoWhatWhy compiled of some of the many organizations highlighted on social media this week, beginning with those directly related to the Floyd tragedy, and then alphabetically arranged.
Black Lives Matter protest in Marin County, CA, on June 2, 2020.
Photo credit: Daniel Arauz / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Official George Floyd Memorial Fund organized by Philonise Floyd
Mission: “This fund is established to cover funeral and burial expenses, mental and grief counseling, lodging and travel for all court proceedings, and to assist our family in the days to come as we continue to seek justice for George. A portion of these funds will also go to the Estate of George Floyd for the benefit and care of his children and their educational fund.”
Black Visions Collective
Mission: “We aim to center our work in healing and transformative justice principles, intentionally develop our organization’s core ‘DNA’ to ensure sustainability, and develop Minnesota’s emerging black leadership to lead powerful campaigns. By building movements from the ground up with an integrated model, we are creating the conditions for long-term success and transformation.”
ActBlue
Mission: “[Donors can] split a donation to all the bail funds, mutual aid funds, and activist organizations listed on this page, or allocate specific amounts to individual groups.”
BLM’s #WhatMatters2020
Mission: “We are expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.”
Brooklyn Community Bail Fund
Mission: “Brooklyn Community Bail Fund secures the freedom of New Yorkers who would otherwise be detained pretrial due to their poverty alone. We are committed to challenging the criminalization of race, poverty and immigration status, the practice of putting a price on fundamental rights, and the persistent myth that bail is a necessary element of the justice system.”
Campaign Zero
Mission: “Funds donated to Campaign Zero support the analysis of policing practices across the country, research to identify effective solutions to end police violence, technical assistance to organizers leading police accountability campaigns and the development of model legislation and advocacy to end police violence nationwide.”
Color Of Change | We help you do something real about injustice.
Mission: “We design campaigns powerful enough to end practices that unfairly hold Black people back, and champion solutions that move us all forward. Until justice is real.”
Equal Justice Initiative
Mission: “The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.”
Innocence Project New Orleans
Mission: “Frees innocent, life-sentenced prisoners. We support our clients living well and fully in the world after their release. We advocate for sensible criminal justice policies that reduce wrongful convictions.”
NAACP
Mission: “The vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race.”
National Bail Fund Network — Community Justice Exchange
Mission: “The Community Justice Exchange develops, shares and experiments with tactical interventions, strategic organizing practices, and innovative organizing tools to end all forms of criminalization, incarceration, surveillance, supervision, and detention. We provide support to community-based organizations across the country that are experimenting with bottom-up interventions that contest the current operation and function of the criminal legal and immigration detention systems. CJE produces tools and resources for organizers using community justice tactics to creatively tackle multiple drivers of criminalization and incarceration — including, but not limited to, money bail, court fees and fines, probation and parole, pretrial detention & supervision, and immigration detention & supervision.”
Ways You Can Help
Mission: “When You’re Done: Educate Yourself. This Doesn’t Go Away Once The Topic Isn’t Trending.”
Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Lorie Shaull / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
