COC Year in Review: Embracing wins in 2023 + Looking ahead to 2024
As we head into the holiday season, I am sharing my deepest gratitude to all of you for supporting Color Of Change and our commitment to advancing racial justice.
Looking back, we have faced significant challenges that have impacted our organization, the movement and our communities this year. Across the nation, we have seen the far right plot attacks to undermine the rights of Black communities and other targeted groups, including the gutting of Affirmative Action and student debt relief by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions, a wave of lawsuits targeting DEI initiatives and backlash against progressive prosecutors and teaching Black history in schools. These attacks are nothing new and we will meet these challenges with the power of the movement.
Our staff, members and supporters delivered winning campaigns. Through their tireless and diligent efforts, our teams continued to build the legacy of Color Of Change as an innovative and member-driven online racial justice organization. We are fighting against the corporate influence eroding the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court by pushing legislators and partnering on a nationwide bus tour with Demand Justice in key cities to raise awareness around the need for Supreme Court expansion and democracy reform.
In our pursuit to defend Black history, we collaborated with the National Education Association to train more than 500 people on advocating for Black students in local school boards and challenging book bans. Despite significant right-wing backlash, we pushed corporations to affirm their commitment to offering courses like AP African American Studies and AP Psychology. Our Winning Justice initiative pressured district attorneys’ offices nationwide to support Black communities. Our actions pushed the Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney’s Office to act on a historic reduction of the jail population by 828 people — nearly 23% — in the Fulton County Jail in just three months.
Thanks to our phone justice work, the Martha Wright-Reed Phone Justice Act was passed by Congress last year. This year, we built on that success by working in coalition with other movement groups to win similar legislation in Massachusetts that made prison phone calls free statewide. We will draw from this important win to urge other states to adopt similar legislation.
Looking ahead to the new year, Color Of Change will remain vigilant and responsive to the looming and real threat to Black people’s freedom, jobs and civil liberties posed by artificial intelligence and misinformation. With the rise of the far right using AI-enabled misinformation to spread lies about Black communities and the lack of adequate regulations on tech companies, we are faced with an uphill battle to avoid the influence of misinformation leading to mobilizing people to engage in disinformed, harmful actions. AI is appearing in every fabric of our society, and we are looking at ways to keep Black people safe from the emerging harms it poses.
In the middle of the year, former President Donald Trump began attacking Color Of Change directly for our powerful, transformative work to elect progressive prosecutors. As we enter a new election cycle, the same former president is now a leading candidate in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. So, it would be an understatement to say there is so much at stake and we are fiercely determined to fight for justice.
We sincerely thank you for supporting Color Of Change in our mission to win for Black people. Thanks to your generosity and dedication, we will continue to pressure policymakers and corporations to implement meaningful practices and policies to promote racial justice. We are able to achieve impact through our presence in Wall Street; Washington, D.C.; Silicon Valley; Hollywood; and district attorney’s offices across the country. Through our strategy, we force politicians, prosecutors and corporate and tech executives to the table and leverage our collective power — made possible through your support and petitions — to bring real solutions for Black people and Black communities.
While we are grateful for the milestones we reached this year, we are confident in our commitment to elevating our work in the upcoming year. As we gear up for the new year, I invite you to continue supporting Color Of Change. Through this support, we can continue achieving impactful wins and building power for Black communities.
I wish you a wonderful, relaxing holiday season.
Until Justice Is Real,
Rashad Robinson