Color of Change: 2019 Champions of Change Awards
Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization, honored Representative Barbara Lee (D, CA ) and Cook County State’s Attorney, Kim Foxx as their first ever Champions of Change. Both were honored at an event held in conjunction with the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus . I served as the host and emcee for the evening. These are my remarks .
Good evening. Welcome to the inaugural Color of Change, Champions of Change Awards. I am Melissa Harris-Perry and I am honored to serve as your host for the evening.
When Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change, asked me to host tonight's event, I immediately accepted. I think my exact words were, “Oh hell yes, anything for Representative Barbara Lee and anything for Color of Change.” Certainly, I am not alone in my enthusiasm for both the courageous Congresswoman from California and this undaunted organization. Both are leading the way toward a more just future for black people.
Color Of Change is the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. With more than 1.5 million members (and yes I am a card carrying member), Color of Change organizes creative, effective, campaigns addressing multiple, intersecting realities of black folk’s lives. In the past year alone, Color of Change has led campaigns addressing criminal justice, economic inequality , police accountability, voting rights, political organizing, educational fairness, media and cultural representations, racist and gendered violence, and workplace equity among many others. I like to think of the Color of Change team as a racial superheroes- when racism attacks, we need only to send up a distress signal, and they will be appear at our side to ensure we do not battle alone.
How Color of Change Wins
Color of Change does more than stand with those who need them. They do more than fight for those who need them. Color of Change wins. Pause for a second and think about that. In a time when victories feel rare and impermanent, Color of Change remains committed to the belief that they must do more than show up. They are committed to effective strategy because black folk must be able to win when we fight. Not every change victory comes swiftly, but they are always willing to shift their approach reframe their discourse, add new coalition partners and keep at it. They go until they win.
Color of Change is not cultivating symbolic struggle. They are exercising power.
As the mission statement declares — — Color of Change designs campaigns powerful enough to end practices that unfairly hold Black people back, and champion solutions that move us all forward. Until justice is real.
Multi-layered strategies are necessary to make meaningful, measurable changes in the individual and collective lives of black folk. One layer of their coordinated efforts ensures many campaigns are initiated by ordinary black folk in communities throughout the country who use their digital platform to sound the alarm on practices and instances of injustice. The responsiveness of Color of Change to these calls for help can lead us to think that Color of Change is exclusively responsive — even reactive.
Pull back the digital curtain a bit and glimpse the operational realities of this team, you soon realize that the effectiveness of Color of Change is rooted firmly in their unmatched preparedness. At times it may be a petition about racial bias in a Midwestern school district, or about an armed demonstration of white supremacists in a small Southern town; or even the racist utterances of a Conservative newscaster, which sets a campaign in motion. But long before the initiating petition, the Color of Change team has spent months gathering research; they have uncovered webs of nefarious relationship; they have mapped incentive structures and points of weaknessof the powerful people and institutions that facilitate violence, fund racism, or instantiate inequality. They prepare in these ways so that when the moment comes, the Color of Change team is ready to move with swift and clear aim at the target. Whether FoxNews or Facebook, Hollywood or Washington, Color of Change rips down the shrouds of secrecy and calls on its more than one million change-agents to apply pressure in precisely the right points.
Witnessing this team in action is genuinely awe-inspiring.
What I most adore about this rather unprecedented organization is not their enormous, highly visible work, but rather their commitment to engage small, local issues with equal courage and skill. Let me indulge in a bit of a personal story. My husband, daughters, and I live, work, and go to school in a mid-sized, city in North Carolina. It is a city most New Yorkers and Beltway activists have never visited. But this spring, our town became a target.
Republican in the North Carolina State legislature introduced a bill to redraw the the city’s wards of our local city council. Their place would have reduced the number of wards from 8 to 5 and would have stacked all three of the city’s black women representatives into a single city ward, clearing the way for a council unresponsive to the needs of our city’s black citizens. The proposal seemed to emerge from nowhere, there was no local call for new districts and no effort to alter the terms of city council representation across the state. Many of us noticed the proposal was set to undermine DD Adams who had just run an aggressive Congressional campaign in the fifth district against Republican incumbent Virginia Foxx .
In response, we did what black communities do every day. We organized locally, galvanizing elected officials, community leaders, and residents to deafeat the racially biased proposal. As we worked on the ground we also called on Color of Change. Color of Change worked with us to develop and launch a campaig, preparing to launch a national effort.
And. We won! The community’s victory preserved black representation on the city council. This victory did not make national headlines, but Color of Change stood with us with as much attention and care as if it did. They know racially just democratic practices in small town North Carolina is as important as racially just representation in Hollywood, California.
Centering Black Girls and Women
At the center of every Color of Change campaign is a story. These stories remind us that black people are human and the wounds inflicted by injustice are real. These stories and the crucial “why this matters” analysis offered along with each story allow all of us to engage social justice with a concrete understanding of how our actions affect our friends, neighbors, and families. The stories set the agenda.
I hope all of you have noticed, as I have, that in the past year Color of Change has forcefully and intentionally amplified efforts on behalf of black girls and women. I had the extraordinary opportunity to witness some of the early conversations and deep self-examination the team engaged as they forcefully chose to ensure that black girls and women, cis and trans, are at the center of their agenda.
Color of Change has called on our community to ask: What about our daughters? Where are our girls? Have we paid attention to the unique challenges and contributions of black women? For eample, Color of Change amplified the story of three 12-year-old girls stripped searched by school officials in Binghamton, simply because they were engaged in joyful, age-approprotiate self-expression. Partnering with the Movement for Black Lives and Southerners on New Ground, Color of Change has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to confront the cash bail system with an annual Mother’s Day bailout of jailed black mothers. And their Give a Child the Universe campaign matched community based organizations with AMC Theaters to ensure thousands of school children had a free opportunity to watch Ava Duvernay’s Wrinkle in Time.
Champions of Change
Tonight, Color of Change extends this work of centering black girls and women with their first ever Champions of Change Awards honoring two black women doing difficult work for racial justice while far too often remaining unacknowledged or actively under attack.
Representative Barbara Lee has represented the 13th Congressional district of California since 1998. She is a legislator with a record of efficacy, honesty and undaunted courage. She is right when so many others are wrong. We will never forget she was the sole member of Congress in the House or Senate who voted against the authorization of use of force following the September 11th terrorist attacks. She speaks when many others remain silentwhich is why she has been unwavering in her opposition to the Death Penalty and her commitment to protect abortion access. Not given to excessive boasting or posting, Congresswoman Lee’s accomplishments are sometimes overlooked, but Color of Change honors this Champion of Change tonight.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx may not seem an obvious choice for Color of Change to honor. Civil Rights organizations rarely count prosecutors, especially one who oversees the nation’s second largest prosecutorial office as an ally. But, in recent years Color of Change began highlighting the critical importance of District Attorneys even as the new Color of Change PAC worked to elect racially progressive prosecutors. Kim Foxx is part of that story. Watching Foxx has been a lesson in just how deeply challenging it is to bear the sometimes racist and sexist abuse of opponents while maintaining accountability to progressive allies. Color of Change acknowledges those challenges even as they recognize the meaningful progress Foxx has made with reforming the broken system of policing in Chicago.
Until Justice is Real
In 2019, we mark the moment 400 years ago when the first enslaved Africans arrived in the British colonies which would eventually become the United States of America. It is a somber and painful remembrance forcing us to confront the enormity of evil and oppression enacted against black people in this land. At the same time this moment calls on us to recognize the survival, struggle and resilience of our parents, grands, and greats.
We are all familiar with the t-shirts declaring. “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” Good intentions animate this declaration. It is meant to mark our collective, if imperfect and incomplete, progress and to recall the sacrifices made by those who came before us to ensure we enjoy widened possibilities.
Still, we must rethink this popular declaration. With charatersitc candor and humor, Damon Young wrote, if you ae your ancestors’ wildest dream, ten “your ancestors had some wack-ass dreams.” There is no doubt our ancestors labored with their descendants in mind. They endured injustice and indignity with full awareness that the change for which the struggled would not be realized in their own lives. They plant seeds whose harvest they wouldnever reap.
Still, the wildest dreams of our ancestors was not for our the future freedoms. Their wildest dream was for their own freedom. Their enormous imaginative minds constructed visions of profiting from their own labor, pursuing their own goals, building their own families, protecting their own lives, and embracing the fullness of human joy and sorrow as fully free people living in just communities. In short, the wildest dreams of our ancestors is precisely the same as our own — that we might find freedom, justice, equity, and full expression of our humanity in this life.
Each time you sign a Color of Change petition. Each time you donate a dollar to a Color of Change campaign. Each time you share a Color of Change campaign with your networks. Each time you join a Color of Change action. Each time someone asks, “but what can I do to affect change?” and you answer by sharing information about Color of Change. Each of these actions are dream chasing. Each of these actions move us closer to the wildly unlikely, but profound possibility of fulfilling our own wildest dream to be free and whole in this life.
We work and dream. Until justice is real.
