ABMOC SEPTEMBER NEWSLETTER
BUILDING A RESILIENT ORGANIZATION
| No matter who gets elected this November, the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color is ready for what comes our way. We’ve already seen enough from Project 2025 and the creeping return of tough-on-crime narratives to understand the fight that lies ahead. Since you last heard from us, we’ve been focused on building a resilient organization prepared to meet the moment. Whatever the outcome, we’ll need to strengthen movement solidarity and build power to abolish familiar systems of oppression that are seeing a resurgence, Left and Right. The movement of poor and working-class Black, Indigenous, and peoples of color must be ready to defend and implement what we’ve won, maintain the struggle against old systems and new harms as they emerge, and advance an agenda created by and for those closest to the problems. To help with these efforts, we first had to build our internal capacity to better support our network partners. We hired a Policy Director (Sally) to lead our policy agenda. We now have two organizers (Laura and one to be announced soon) to support the coordination and engagement of our network and a Senior Advisor (Dr. David Turner III) to help us further develop our organization’s internal infrastructure, leadership development, and political consciousness. To strengthen the infrastructure of our network’s collaborative style of leadership, we’ve established an ABMoC Advisory Committee of grassroots leaders across California to help guide the future of our work and strategic direction. You can learn more about our advisory committee here. We brought in a comms firm, The Worker Agency, with extensive experience supporting and winning campaigns by and for directly impacted people by addressing root causes and structural barriers. As you can see, we’ve been busy laying foundations of our own for 2025 and beyond. Raising resources and people power is a critical part of building a strong organization, so if you want to engage in the work or would like to pitch in resources, you can do so here. So that’s what we’ve been up to – now for the future. This Fall, we’ll establish Power Tables focused on our five priority areas and our team will travel across California to meet with partners and hear directly about the challenges they face and the opportunities to push harder on our agenda for racial and gender justice. This work will inform our goals in the near and long-term and support the finalization of our five year plan and strategy. Finally, in December, we will bring hundreds of advocates from across our network together for our 2024 Policy Summit in San Diego to strengthen movement solidarity, build power, and collectively craft our policy agenda. |
ABMoC Legislative Updates
| [BUDGET VICTORY] California Youth Apprenticeship Program and Community Youth Leadership Core: In 2021, we worked to secure 120.5 M dollars for critical youth employment -California Youth Leadership Corps and the California Youth Apprenticeship Program. The governor proposed to make cuts of up to 45 million dollars to these programs, but through the collective advocacy of our network and partnership with the legislature, we were able to protect these resources and ensure that young people across California, especially those who have been historically disconnected to economic opportunity can continue to be supported and get the jobs training and wraparound supports needed. [ON GOVERNOR’S DESK] Preserving Benefits for Foster Youth: The California State Legislature passed a common sense bill that would prevent counties from taking critical social security and survivor benefits from foster youth and ensures that supplemental security income goes directly to foster youth. This bill will ensure that youth are provided the financial support they need to successfully transition out of the system. It’s now on the Governors desk and we’re asking for your support to pressure him to sign it. [SIGNED INTO LAW] Breaking Barriers to Employment Initiative. This bill would make changes to Breaking Barriers, a 2017 initiative to help people get jobs, by requesting $5 million for an innovative workforce grant program that empowers community-based organizations to support people who face barriers to employment. There’s a letter letter template here you could use to send to Governor Newsom, and a fact sheet here. |
Other Happenings
What we’ve been up to…This past weekend we spoke at Black Men Build, The New Men Tour, a nationwide effort to create a space for Black men and boys to BE: be ourselves, be in conversation, be challenged, be educated, be together. Black Men Build isn’t about transaction; it’s about sharing the tools that we have and transforming us into a political force that can fight and win.
What we’re reading…How to remain secret: The San Francisco Chronicle published a powerful compendium of police misconduct that extends decades. For decades police have benefitted from secret pacts allowing them to get jobs at different departments. This only happened because a State bill called SB1421 passed a few years ago, following years of demands for more transparency about police misconduct.
Song we’re listening to…Tennessee – Arrested Development