Medias – Page 6 – Color Of Change

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America’s First Black Billionaire Calling for $14 Trillion in Reparations

Robert L. Johnson, America’s first Black billionaire, is calling on the federal government to pay reparations, saying over the last 200 years, “Black folks have been denied $13-15 trillion of wealth.” He urged lawmakers to pass a decades-old bill that would set the stage for reparations, HR 40, which would create a commission to study and develop proposals for reparations for descendants of slaves. Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson is quoted. “HR 40, when it’s passed, will not actually provide reparations for anyone, but what it will do is move us on the road to be more truthful and in direct conversation about what happened. We’re also seeing local communities have these conversations.”

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Color of Change & Diverse Representation Start Black Music Executives Pipeline

As part of #ChangeMusic, Color of Change has partnered with Diverse Representation to launch the Black Music Executives Pipeline Program. The program will help record labels, publishers, video production companies, streaming services and touring companies to quickly identify and hire Black executive. The idea is to bridge the gap between the high number of Black artists in the industry and disproportionately low number of Black executives representing them. Color Of Change’s interim Chief Marketing & Storytelling Officer Amity Paye is quoted. “The Black Music Executives Pipeline Program is a crucial step in the ongoing fight to end the music industry’s decades-long history of discrimination and exclusion of Black professionals.”

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PODCAST: Rashad Robinson Is an Intersectional Leader Fighting for Equity and Justice

Columnist Jonathan Capeheart sat down with Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson – who he calls “a civil rights leader you should be paying more attention to” – for Pride month. Rashad calls what’s happening now “a deep cultural shift in America” and explains what it is means that racial justice has become a majoritarian issue in America. “It was racial justice that moved people to the streets, moved people to action, led to upticks in voter registration. You saw white folks in a Starbucks taking out their cellphones and filming a police interaction because of our engagement.” He talks about how to transform the presence of Black people into real power, and what cues we can follow from the LGBTQ movement.

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Philly DA Krasner Trounces Police-Backed Challenger

Four years into his experiment with reforming Philadelphia criminal justice, Larry Krasner overwhelmingly won his primary race for reelection as district attorney. Since 2017, Krasner has become a symbol of the movement to elect reform-minded prosecutors. But his reforms also sparked a serious backlash – making him a target for law enforcement groups and prominent Republicans. Scott Roberts, Color Of Change’s senior director of criminal justice campaigns, is quoted. “With all the noise that goes on, the attacks, we know that the agenda is still very popular. People want to see these prosecutors’ offices being focused on bringing down incarceration rates, and holding police accountable. And they’re actually looking for other solutions for violence, they’re not willing to buy into the narrative that they hear from police unions and conservative politicians.”

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Companies Pressured to Cut Ties with Group Behind Restrictive Voting Legislation

389 bills have been introduced proposing new voting restrictions in nearly ever state in 2021, according to a tracker from the Brennan Center for Justice. In response, 300+ groups including Color Of Change are sending letters to companies demanding they pull funding from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the lobbying group that has written many of the new restrictions. Color Of Change’s Scott Roberts is quoted. “Through the American Legislative Exchange Council, dozens of corporations – many of whom pledged solidarity with Black workers and consumers just last year – are secretly funding efforts to silence Black voters.” According to the NY Times, the Heritage Foundation is working with Alec to “produce model legislation for state legislatures” in a $24M push for tougher laws in swing states.

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Dove Helps Draw Support for the CROWN Act Through Music Video with Nina Simone

Dove has joined Color Of Change and the CROWN Coalition in efforts to make hair discrimination illegal nationwide. Today 80% of Black women having reported having to change their hair to fit into workplace norms. More beauty and lifestyle brands are signing on as champions for ending race-based hair discrimination across the country. “Dove is on a mission to change beauty and redefine narrow beauty standards. It is not acceptable for any of us to change our natural identity to gain employment or access to school,” says Esi Eggleston Bracey, Dove’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. People can watch the music vide here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHRNrgDIJfo.

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Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors to Receive $300,000 Compensation

One hundred years after the horrific Tulsa race massacre, the Justice for Greenwood Foundation will award the three living survivors of the murders a $300K gift. Mother Viola Fletcher, Mother Lessie Benningfield, and Hughes Van Ellis, will each receive $100K. This comes after years of calls for reparations and justice for the survivors, and renewed campaigns and calls for justice driven by Color Of Change. Hundreds of Black lives, businesses, and homes were destroyed. “Black Wall Street” as it was called was burned to the ground and 100,000 Black people were left homeless. But until now, no survivor, nor any of their family members, has ever been compensated.

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Police Are Still Killing People at the Same Rate as before

After all the protests for George Floyd, after Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder, a staggering fact remains: the rate of fatal encounters with police, who have killed about three people per day this year, is on par with last year. In fact, during the first four months of 2021, there’s only been 6 days when police did not kill anyone according to new data from Mapping Police Violence. Sr. Director of Criminal Justice Campaigns Scott Roberts is quoted saying, “There’s an effort, at least by some political actors, to give folks false hope that we’re turning the corner around police violence. These numbers show that, as far as we can tell, it’ll continue.” Today Black people are 3x more likely to be killed by police than white people, but 1.5x more likely to be unarmed. The work to transform policing continues.

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‘Defund the Police, Invest in Our Communities’

Activists gathered a year after George Floyd was murdered to unveil five new community murals calling for defunding the NYPD. Organizations behind the artwork include Color Of Change, Communities United for Police Reform, Arab American Association of NY, Justice Committee, Make the Road NY and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. COC Campaign Director Malachi Robinson said their demands had not changed over the past year. “What we were demanding was transformation, for real change and for the end of police terrorizing Black and Brown communities. We are saying no more police and no more mass incarceration. We’re saying we need to invest in our communities and the things that keep our communities really safe.” The groups are demanding City Council defund the NYPD by $1B and invest it in youth programs.

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On Anniversary Of George Floyd’s Murder, Activists Push to Divest Police Funding

A year after George Floyd’s death, activists report the fight for racial justice is far from over. Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice at Color of Change, reminds us Floyd was ultimately killed because police were called over an alleged counterfeit $20 bill. “We have over-invested in policing as a solution. There are better alternatives to address violence and crime in our communities.” Since the police killings of Rayshard Brooks and Daniel Prude, Color Of Change has been working in Minneapolis and Rochester to reorganize city priorities, decrease police budgets, and reallocate funds to alternative programs. He says, “Our job is to take that energy from protest movements, direct it into the campaigns for systemic change. Obviously, we still have a long way to go… outrage alone is not going to change policing.”

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George Floyd’s Death Was a Wake-up Call for Corporate America. Here’s What Has — and Hasn’t — Changed.

One year after uprisings for racial justice, Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson is interviewed about whether business leaders’ commitment to Black people and social justice is standing the test of time. “Change was never going to happen overnight. So many of the corporations that spoke up have deep systemic challenges that can’t be solved with a tweet, a statement, a diversity committee.” Floyd’s murder changed Black Lives Matter from a controversial movement to a corporate mantra virtually overnight. Fortune 1000 companies poured billions of dollars into programs designed to address racism and hit new benchmarks on diversity. But it’ll take more than a year of funding to rectify racial wealth disparities in the US.

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The #OscarsAreStillSoWhite

A new analysis of best picture nominees over the last seven years shows racial and gender representation on-screen and behind-the-camera hasn’t changed that much since a national conversation on diversity in Hollywood exploded. The numbers reveal that the Oscars are still so white — and predominantly male. The data exposes patterns of inequality and exclusion where, even today, many films nominated for Best Picture have no Black actors or actors of color in major roles. Black and Brown actors tend to only appear in significant numbers in films about people of color. Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, which started the #ChangeHollywood initiative, says this has to change. “When people are shut out from power and the ability to actually have power in terms of being able to tell their own stories, it has a major impact.”

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