Weekly Reads—April 19, 2024

Enjoy PEAK’s weekly roundup of timely insights from the grantmaking community and beyond.

“As RWJF works to dismantle structural racism and counter the laws and policies created to deny health and opportunity to people based on their race, class, and gender, we want the people and communities facing the greatest barriers to be able to set policy agendas. We want them to create and implement solutions, whether related to housing security, financial stability, civil rights protections or other health interventions. To this end, RWJF is prioritizing two critical levers: ballot measures and race-conscious policies and programs.” [more]
Avenel Joseph and Elizabeth DiLauro, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

“If we want to understand how to build a society that celebrates difference — or at least doesn’t hold back individuals or communities because of it—we must interrogate the idea that people don’t want to talk about race or identity. … It will not be easy for successive generations to shed all the sticky, icky, coded, embedded, underlying racialized gunk they’ve inherited from us. We adults should know that, because we are still choking on the racialized smog that has hung in the air since we ourselves were kids.” [more]
Michele Norris, The Washington Post

“Last April, through the leadership of three staff members leaning into possibility, the Justice Funders staff voted to increase our budget allocation for Indigenous Honor & Land Taxes. We committed to continue paying our Shuumi Land Tax [a voluntary annual contribution that non-Indigenous people living on the Confederated Villages of Lisjan’s territory can make] at the same percentage annually … We know that philanthropic wealth has been accumulated through the theft of Indigenous lands and the exploitation of communities of color, and that philanthropic institutions have a particular responsibility to contribute to the healing of the lands they occupy and to enter into a restorative relationship with local Indigenous communities.” [more]
Justice Funders for Medium

“The Center on Community Philanthropy (The Center) at the Clinton School of Public Service welcomed Cohort II of the Racial Healing Certification Program to Little Rock for the start of its Racial Healing Tour. … [A] diverse group of leaders from a broad spectrum of organizations including, Asian American Federation, Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE), CHANGE Philanthropy, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, Hispanics in Philanthropy, Exponent Philanthropy, Foundation for Louisiana, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Michigan Transformation Collective, Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, The Wilderness Society and Turning Points for the Soul. Their journey began with a visit to Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. The cohort then had a virtual experience with the Emmett Till Interpretive Center… [and] concluded with a visit to the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum, National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the newly unveiled Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama.” [more]
University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service