TO HONOR BLACK HISTORY IS TO CELEBRATE BLACK FUTURES
In our weekly call to action, we will highlight different partners and organizations who are doing movement work today to create a better tomorrow. We invite you all to continue to educate yourselves around the issues confronting Black communities – in the United States and across the globe – and to contribute to the leaders who are working to create solutions so we are not facing the same issues in the future.
This week we focus on organizations that transcend borders – including pushing back against racist immigration and deportation policies – in building a global community free from anti-Black racism grounded or linked to colonial legacies, capitalism and militarism.
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Abahlali baseMjondolo, known as the shack dwellers’ movement, is one of the largest peoples’ movements to emerge in post-apartheid South Africa. Committed to land housing dignity for all, Abahlali continues to advocate for the poor and marginalized in the townships during the pandemic. Listen to 2018’s Activist Files with S’bu Zikode, co-founding member and former president, discuss what is at stake, how the movement rises above violent repression, and what the U.S. can learn from South Africa.
African Communities Together (ACT) is an organization of African immigrants fighting for civil rights, opportunity, and a better life for families in the U.S. and worldwide. ACT mobilizes African immigrant communities to speak out on the issues that affect their lives and the lives of their families. ACT works on the local, state, national, and international level on issues including fair immigration reform, jobs in the African community, and language access. Most recently, they fought for the thousands of immigrants from Liberia who are in the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) programs to be granted a pathway to permanent residence and were plaintiffs in the lawsuit African Communities Together v. TRUMP.
The Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) educates and engages Black American and Black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social and economic justice. BAJI’s Black Immigration Network brings together Black-led organizations and programs to advance just immigration policies and promote cultural shifts our that communities need. BAJI just released Our Stories and Visions: Gender in Black Immigrant Communities, which provides a space for Black women and femmes to powerfully, and often painfully, share how they are attempting to survive a pandemic that is forcing many deeper into unpaid caregiving roles while working for a world where their safety is a reality. For more on BAJI’s work in response to U.S. immigration policies, read former CCR Bertha Justice Fellow Stephanie Llanes blog, “5 Things to Know About Being Black at the Border,” written after participating in BAJI’s 2017 Black-centered delegation to the U.S. southern border.
Haitian Bridge Alliance is a coalition of Haitian non-profit organizations and community activists who have come together to serve the Haitian community in California and beyond, to ensure the success of new immigrants as they navigate their new lives in the United States. Haitian Bridge Alliance has been tracking deportation flights to Jamaica, Haiti, Cameroon and other Black countries and mobilizing to stop the flights.
The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Port-au-Prince-based Bureau des Avocats Internationaux work together to support the Haitian people in their grassroots struggle for a just system of law, a society without violence, social justice, and a democratic government. Among its recent projects has been advocating for Haitian immigrants to the United States, whether for TPS or in challenging deportations.
