Fighting for Justice, Multiracial Democracy, and an Equitable Economy in Dark Times
Moderator: Allison Jones, Common Future, VP of Brand and Storytelling
Panelist: Jennifer Njuguna, Common Future, CO-CEO
Panelist: Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder-in-Residence, PolicyLink
Moderator: Karla Monterroso, Founder and Managing Partner, Brava Leaders
From mounting executive orders to lawsuits against organizations working at the intersection of equity and justice to the slashing of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work across sectors, it’s safe to say that we’re in a dark moment for our democracy. But it’s important to remember that hope is not lost and that now is a critical time to come together and fight for the dream of a working, equitable, multiracial economy.
To discuss this moment, we brought together the brilliant Karla Monterroso, Angela Glover Blackwell, and our Co-CEO Jennifer Njuguna Esq., moderated by VP of Brand and Storytelling Allison Jones. Here are our top takeaways from their discussion:
We Cannot Expect the Legal System Alone to Save Us
To kick us off, Jennifer laid the groundwork on the importance of understanding the law and its role in maintaining systems of injustice and justice—something we’ve discussed at length and focused on in previous webinars. She reflected on a visit to the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Memorial and Museum in Montgomery, Alabama:
“One of the most striking things that I saw there was a timeline of Supreme Court cases, going all the way back to the Dred Scott case from 1857, which denied citizenship and government protection to Black people and was decided when slavery was legal. That timeline brought us to the present day, and I was so struck by just seeing those cases lined up over a period of 100 years and how clear it was that the law went hand in hand with other tools used right to maintain systems.”
Though courts have changed how they interpret sections of the law—like the 2023 decision on Affirmative Action or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruling against the Fearless Fund, or the countless subsequent lawsuits targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion practices—the law itself has not changed, and can still be used as a tool for justice. We see the law acting as a guardrail in the 90 (and counting) lawsuits against the current administration. Nineteen of those lawsuits have resulted in a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction.
“And so the law is still very much a tool when it comes to protecting democracy. But what I want to underscore here is that it can't be the only tool, especially when we're seeing the continued power grabs from the executive branch of government.”
— Jennifer Njuguna, CO-CEO, Common Future
Our Democracy Has Always Been Fragile, and We Must Shape It to Our Values
What are those other tools? Throughout history, we have seen narrative, counter-narrative, education, information sharing, organizing, protests, civic engagement, and many other strategies to help shape our laws and the interpretation of them.
In early 2023, Angela Glover Blackwell wrote about the need for a new narrative in SSIR, How We Achieve a Multiracial Democracy. As Angela explained in our panel discussion, our society has never given multiracial democracy a real chance.
“By the people and for the people, while the people who were in this land were being exposed to genocide and land theft on a scale not to be believed. We were talking about governing of the people by the people and for the people, and a huge swath of the people who were Black were in human bondage for the purpose of slave labor.”
—Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder-in-Residence, PolicyLink
If we look at the history of our country, we can see why democracy is so flawed and fragile right now. Our country was founded on a dehumanizing relationship between Black and white people during the time of slavery that actually set up the protocols of oppression for the country—where we undervalue the work of poor people, Black people, and other people of color.
“You penalize, disinvest in one group, everybody suffers….42% of people who are elderly live in or near poverty, over half of our children under 18 living in or near poverty, 59% of all Black people, 64% of Latino people, 42% of men living at or near poverty, 41% of Asians, over 60 million white people.”
America has the chance to achieve democracy for all who live here if we truly give it a chance—built without zero-sum thinking. “When we invest in those who have been rendered most marginalized, most vulnerable in society, [all of] society benefits enormously.”
Multiracial, Multicultural Institutions Need to Come Together to Meet the Moment
Across the workforce, white men earn more than any other racial and ethnic group, widened further when compared to women of those groups. In practice, Karla explained that it looks like “people of color, Black, Indigenous and/or Latine people in particular, [dropping] out the workforce at the $60,000 mark. And that's not us dropping out. That is us being pushed out. High and mid-wage work in America was already segregated, and we never had a parallel movement to integrate high-wage and mid-wage work equal to the kinds of integration that happened in other places like education. And that meant we were just stuck in a [apartheid] economy.”
Enter multiracial, multicultural institutions as a way to move beyond that stratification—a new kind of organization that emerged under Barack Obama, which Karla defines as having 20% multiracial representation and 40% female/femme representation at every layer and level of leadership. But they have been faced with unique challenges due to existing in the society we all struggle with, “in part because we never did the work to create the social and economic contracts that were necessary, the norms and behaviors that were necessary, inside of an integrated institution.”
We have to create a relational fabric across differences to defeat the logic of segregation and anti-blackness, “which is that the most marginalized person in the room is the acceptable trade-off. And we have to grapple with no one being the acceptable trade-off.” But a pitfall is doing the opposite as well, “what I have seen in moments of major duress is that we often will turn on the person with the most amount of power around us, and then that prohibits us from really strategizing about the big powers that we need to defeat.”
“We are under attack, right? And so we have to figure out ways to be in coalition, and how to align with each other, even when we don't agree...digging that out from ourselves, and the somatic work that that takes, is going to be one of the challenges for our institutions at this moment.”
—Karla Monterroso, Founder and Managing Partner, Brava Leaders
How We Can Build Solidarity and Coalition Now
So, given the legal landscape and the challenges our organizations face, what can be done to build coalition and solidarity now? Our panel offered a variety of strategies for how society and organizations can work together at this moment in history.
We first have to start from a place of strength. According to Jennifer, “When we think about just the sheer numbers and all of the things that we are doing as individual organizations, and then when you put all that together, that is powerful.”
She highlighted the importance of resetting broader narratives, being bold in telling the truth, and being clear with language. “We know throughout our history, conservative forces have and will continue to be very effective with co-opting language—turning that language against us, spinning their own narratives and pushing, you know, racial justice advocates, other advocates, into defense mode with distracting debates [that] continue to obscure the actual problems of white supremacy and racial capitalism. I think we collectively need to grapple with the narratives and have that bravery and be more bold about telling the truth and being clear and intentional with our language.”
In turn, Angela reiterated that now is the time for our institutions to strategically move across multiple fronts from the grassroots to the grasstops. “You gotta be in the courts, you gotta be in the streets, you gotta be in the neighborhood associations, in the churches, in the social aspects of life. You gotta be able to be in mutual aid…the bus boycott was able to happen over a year because of mutual aid. People knew where to get a ride. They knew what the safe streets were to walk to work. “
And how we need “transformative solidarity,” which she explains as “your freedom is my freedom. Your injustice is injustice to me. We have to embrace it all and be in transformative solidarity, which means we have to have moral underpinnings, which means that we have to not denigrate each other or each of each other's futures. We have to lift them up. We have to be ready when the time comes to show up, to show up with everything.“
Karla spoke about the need to be ready for the moment “because whatever is happening right now is going to come with an implosion, and it's going to hurt a lot of people, and at that point, people will be very willing to try a lot of new and that new cannot be built like the New Deal was on the exclusion of people of color. It's got to be built in the way that Angela is talking about all of us coming together.” As a sector, we have already tested different structures and solutions and are ready to offer many solutions for the pathway forward.
The Importance of Maintaining Momentum and Hope
Finally, in these dark times, our panelists spoke on what organizer Mariame Kaba describes as the discipline of hope, “To practice active hope, we do not need to believe that everything will work out in the end. We need only decide who we are choosing to be and how we are choosing to function.” A practice we need now more than ever.
“The thing that I think is so important is to document what works,” Angela explained, “I am of the belief that there is no problem, that some community, someplace, isn't doing something about, and we need to document it and share it, call those communities out, so that we constantly are reinforcing that we are not alone. We are not alone in suffering, but we are also not alone in problem-solving, and we will not be alone as we lean forward.”
“What's really giving me hope is the power of the small wins every movement,” Jennifer added, “It’s one thing to look at it in hindsight and see what we may think of as the culmination or the major victory, but when you unpack it, you see that it was a number of everyday people taking steps, you know, exhibiting bravery and courage.”
The time is here to roll up our sleeves to defeat the authoritarian, racial capitalist system in place and fight for the dream of a working, equitable, multiracial economy. Stay tuned for more panels from this ongoing series, and be sure to check out our past webinars.
