In 2014, we witnessed the mobilization of people across the country in response to the unjustified killings of Black people at the hands of police. We believe that an informed and engaged constituency is necessary to make substantive change in Black communities. Hear how members of ABFE’s Board of Directors express the need to invest in Black organizing…now!
I am so proud and humbled by the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken peaceful and powerful leadership to the streets to demand that Black Lives Matter. They intuitively and explicitly understood the wisdom of Frederick Douglass who prophetically stated, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”Black people are a resilient people. We have survived the inhuman humiliating suffering of chattel slavery, which built the foundation of wealth of this nation, without recompense, Black Lives Matter. From the Jim Crow segregation, to the share cropping systems, where hundreds of thousands of black people suffered legalized indentured servitude and systematic rape of Black women, lynching and imprisonment, Black Lives Matter. From Selma to Montgomery where Black adults and children were beaten, bitten by vicious dog’s, bombed, fire hosed and jailed, Black Live Matter, From the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to the Black Panther Party For Self-Defense, Black Lives Matter. From Martin, Malcolm to Obama, Black Lives Matter. From the welfare system, to the war on drugs, which has decimated a once strong black family structure and system, to the New Jim Crow of mass incarceration of African-American men and grand jury systems which legitimizes the indiscriminate murder of unarmed black men, Black Lives Matter. From the majority of police officers who working hard to serve us well every day, Black Lives Matter. Now is the time to set the scale of justice right. Now is the time to ensure we finally get democracy right! Now is the time for all of us who believe in justice to make a difference and support the movement that Black Lives Matter.
Gary Cunningham
Vice Chair, ABFE Board
Trustee, Loppet Foundation