With the Freddie Gray uprising as a catalyst, Baltimore residents voted in the $12 million Children & Youth Fund. Here’s how local activists in this majority Black city ensured that young, people-of-color-led, grassroots groups had a seat at the table.

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
By Bakari Kitwana
August 30, 2018
Three years after the police killing of Freddie Gray triggered an uprising in Baltimore, little has changed for Black residents who make up 63 percent of its population. Attempts to prosecute Gray’s killers famously failed. A 2017 consent decree, which the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) entered into after the U.S. Department of Justice found a pattern of civil rights violations against Blacks, is stalled. This year’s revelations about the corruption and violence of the BPD’s Gun Trace Task Force underscore more of the same.
There is, however, the potential for change in the form of the Baltimore Children &Youth Fund (BCYF). More than two decades in the making, the new $12 million fund provides local youth-focused groups with grants ranging from $500 to $500,000. BCYF is funded annually by 3 percent of the city’s property taxes. What’s innovative is how its principals structured it to ensure that small Black grassroots groups that usually go unfunded have a seat at the table.
Read more of Bakari Kitwana on how local activists are ensuring that people-of-color-led grassroots groups have a seat at the table: http://bit.ly/2wwZcsJ.
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