Like all of you, the Board of Directors and staff of the Julian Grace Foundation have experienced a full range of emotions recently – anger, sadness, hope, despair, pain, and grief. We are grieving with the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many others. And we are grieving for the communities who have experienced this pain for far too long.
We remain focused on the racial injustice that has brought us to this moment in our history. The Julian Grace Foundation stands in solidarity with the individuals and organizers who are on the frontlines, risking their lives, and dismantling racist and oppressive systems that have existed in our communities for centuries.
Words simply are not enough, but we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all of you leading and organizing during these critical times, as well as those providing essential services to many of the same communities suffering disproportionately from COVID-19 impacts.
We also hope you are taking care of yourselves, engaging in community care, and supporting your African American colleagues right now, as well as making space for healing.
While hope seems hard to hold on to right now, we remain hopeful that systems can be rebuilt more equitably; that Black voices will be heard and amplified; and that the many wrongful deaths will stop. We are committed to supporting these actions and others.
As a Foundation we will be revisiting our commitment to racial equity in the coming months and that may mean some difficult decisions about who we support and why. We will also be making additional grants to specifically support African American communities and organizations engaged in frontline work right now.
We welcome your ideas for how we can do better as a foundation, and as philanthropy overall.
#BlackLivesMatter