For Immediate Release: June 29, 2022
Media Contact: media@colorofchange.org
COLOR OF CHANGE CALLS ON PROSECUTORS, CORPORATIONS TO PROTECT BLACK PEOPLE FOLLOWING SCOTUS OVERTURNING ROE V. WADE.
Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change, issued the following statement.
“For the last several days, the vast majority of the country has been responding to the Supreme Court’s decision to protect gun rights and eliminate reproductive freedom. These are just two devastating outcomes of the 2016 election and a right-wing strategy to retract the progress we’ve made towards racial justice and equity in the last decade. As we continue to process these current decisions, it’s also our job to collectively mobilize our communities to defend the freedoms that remain.
At Color Of Change, we are starting where we are strongest: with Black communities who have already come together and led the way to hold prosecutors and corporations accountable for their impact on Black communities, and who are ready for the next fight. What happens next on the issue of abortion will largely come down to the decisions of local prosecutors and corporate executives. They will decide whether state legislatures are able to successfully criminalize reproductive freedom and continue to use the justice system to destroy our lives and futures. That’s why we are demanding that local prosecutors and corporations use their power to protect our communities rather than enabling extremists who are trying to remove the rights we’ve fought so hard to gain.
Any effort to further scrutinize pregnancy outcomes ensures that Black people across the country are more likely to be targeted for criminal investigation, and also forces pregnant people to live in fear that an abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or other pregnancy outcomes could result in a prison sentence. But state and local prosecutors still hold the power to decide when an abortion is prosecuted and when it is not, they can still remove the possibility that an abortion or any other pregnancy outcome could result in a prison sentence. At Color Of Change, we have been planning for this new reality and have already issued calls for prosecutors to stand up for the people they are supposed to protect, and refuse to to prosecute people for abortions and other pregnancy outcomes. Many prosecutors are already issuing public commitments to defend their communities, and by coming together with our 7 million members, we will continue to hold them accountable to those commitments. We will also hold any prosecutors accountable who cave into right-wing pressure and betray Black communities, and make it just a little bit safer for pregnant people caught in this widespread attack on reproductive freedom.
The decisions of corporate executives will also greatly determine whether state legislatures can take control of Black lives and put us in harm’s way. Already we’ve seen companies like Facebook gather sensitive user data from crisis pregnancy centers through tracking tools that users have no control over. In a time where this private information could criminalize people, we’re demanding tech giants to stop collecting this information so it can never be used to prosecute people or target them with anti-abortion messages. Corporations must follow through on their proclaimed values and prove that Black lives matter to them now — just as much as they proclaimed Black lives mattered to them in summer 2020.
Color Of Change will be rallying our members to work together to demand a better, safer world for all of us. We will hold our elected officials and corporate enablers accountable as we aim to win justice for all.”
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Color Of Change is the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by over 7 million members, we move decision-makers in corporations and governments to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America. Visit www.colorofchange.org