“Everyone in philanthropy can potentially play a role in supporting transformative racial justice work,” remarks Lori Villarosa, founder and executive director, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (PRE) in a piece for PEAK Grantmaking blog. “But to unlock that potential, each person needs to apply racial equity and racial justice lenses to all aspects of their work. And grants professionals can be a driving force by both shifting practice and ensuring that the organization is impactfully looking at its work through both lenses.”

Villarosa defines the frequently conflated terms: racial equity and racial justice grantmaking, and then she examines the current racial equity and racial justice landscape.

Read more here.

Robin D. G. Kelley shares “Back to the Future: Complex Movements Make Revolution,” an essay from memory on a conversation with 2022 Knight Arts + Tech Fellows Complex Movements in Shift Space 2.0, a publication exploring new media landscapes. Kelley recollects, “Radical philosopher Grace Lee Boggs (1915–2015) was the catalyst for Complex Movements, which took its name in 2010 after listening to her invoke quantum theory to explain new directions in organizing.”

“They do not measure their work in terms of winning or losing “campaigns’ but in struggling ‘to be in right relationship with change,'” writes Kelley. “[Sage Crump] cautions against having any illusions about the difficult work ahead, and at the same time insists that we cannot afford to be disillusioned, which can happen when we focus solely on resisting state violence and oppression at the expense of our internal struggle to find new ways to be together.”

Read or listen to the full piece here.