After Color Of Change led a survey on how Black and Latino businesses are faring during the pandemic, DoorDash agreed to create a new feature highlighting Black-owned restaurants. They will be working with us on a program to support and drive customers to Black merchants on the app and to reduce bias on their platform.
Breonna Taylor was brutally shot and killed when cops showed up at her door unannounced in the middle of the night. Her boyfriend Kenneth Walker heard police ramming open their front door and fired a shot in self-defense, eliciting a barrage of gunfire from cops, who hit Taylor and left her dying on the floor of her hallway. Police had come to the wrong house, with no warrant, and tried to coverup their fatal mistake by acting like they were on a drug raid. After 45,000 Color Of Change members created a public outcry, Louisville’s Commonwealth Attorney agreed to drop attempted murder charges against Walker. We continue to fight for #Justice4Breonna. The FBI is now investigating her murder.
As part of our ongoing work to protect Black people online, more than 35,000 COC members signed our petition raising concerns about cyber terrorism targeting Black people on Zoom. This especially matters now, with so much of life being conducted online during the pandemic. After Color Of Change reached out to the Zoom’s CEO with our demands, the company hired Damien Hooper-Campbell as its first Chief Diversity Officer. Now we expect the company to follow through on our other demands to make the platform safe for Black users.
Color Of Change helps people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by 1.7 million members, we move decision makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people, and all people. Until justice is real.
As cities start to slash police budgets, COC President Rashad Robinson explains why he supports defunding the police, which he calls a “violent institution,” and uplifting communities of color after decades of disinvestment. “This is not a time for tweaking or tinkering, it’s time to start over,” he says. “Minneapolis has taken the first step towards remaking public safety in a way that protects Black lives and invests in Black and Brown communities. We hope cities across the country follow.”
Georgia’s primaries — with malfunctioning machines, long lines, polling sites that opened late and too few back up paper ballots, especially in Black neighborhoods — feel like a warning for what’s to come this November. Rashad Robinson is quoted, “The systemic under-resourcing of polling locations in predominantly Black communities like Atlanta is an intentional method of voter suppression. This is why it’s so urgent that the Senate act immediately to fully fund safe elections in the HEROES Act, and mandate that states spend that money addressing and preventing problems like the ones Georgia primary voters experienced today.”
Rashad Robinson discusses the killing of Rayshard Brooks, the charges filed against the police officers, and why it’s crucial to defund the police on Democracy Now! “What we’re seeing with these charges is a deep recognition of the power of a movement — the power of a movement to push and exact consequences. At the end of the day we have to raise the floor of what’s acceptable and we also have to keep a deep vision for what human rights looks like.”
Rashad Robinson is interviewed about how “reality” crime shows are often PR for police departments, showing only cops’ perspective and never diving into the backstories of the people being dehumanized and brutalized by cops. He talks about Color Of Change’s work to get Cops, Live PD, and other shows that glorify corrupt law enforcement pulled off the air.
NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, about the group’s ongoing campaign to put an end to harmful and inaccurate portrayals of policing on television. After they got Cops and Live PD canceled, he remarked, “What I’m encouraged by is that we are entering a new context where, hopefully, we have the ability to set new rules as more and more Americans wake up to recognizing systemic racism.”
CBS released a statement that “Black Lives, Black Culture, Black Communities Matter.” Many noted the irony, coming from a company where police and law enforcement are the stars of some of their highest-rated, longest-running shows. Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson is quoted talking about the Normalizing Justice report. “We end up with people thinking the system is working fine because of all the images coming into their homes. If you look at these shows, Black people exist. But racism doesn’t.”