Grantee Partner Spotlight: The Movement for Black Lives
In the 24 hours after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, police across the country killed six people, including a Black teenage girl named Ma’Khia Bryant. It reminds Charles Long that the work begun in Ferguson, MO, the birthplace of the Black Lives Matter movement nearly seven years ago is still as urgent as ever.
Long is the resource coordinator for the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition formed in Ferguson in December 2014 to advance equity, justice, and healing. M4BL was out front last summer helping coordinate nationwide demonstrations for Black lives. While many who participated for the first time may have seen the protests as somewhat spontaneous, planning for a moment like this began years ago.
In 2016 M4BL started work on what would become the M4BL Project 2024: Black Power Rising, a five-year plan rooted in transformative goals to impact the lives of millions of Black people.
“While we had no idea that COVID was coming, or that the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor would lead to the kind of uprising we saw this past summer, the reason that we were able to meet this moment is because of the years of work we had done already. We were building trust among the organizations that were holding the work to be able to respond collectively,” said Long. He also said the work was “a general place for people to hold their grief.”
Like many organizations doing critical anti-racism work previously unnoticed by most philanthropists, M4BL received an influx of dollars from philanthropy following the summer’s uprising, including from the Raikes Foundation. “Philanthropy, for the most part, has been slow to recognize the transformative impact of community organizing work and that includes us. I give great credit to our Black staff members who pushed for this kind of funding. I can’t imagine how we contribute to creating a more just future without this kind of work front and center,” said Dennis Quirin, executive director.
With an influx of long-term commitments, Long said M4BL can play the long game and build capacity among their many partners “Capacity building is the kind of unsexy funding foundations traditionally haven’t been interested in. But is so critical. I’m excited to see that is starting to change,” Quirin said.
What began as a small group of like-minded people has since grown to include more than 150 Black-led, Black-facing organizations and leaders including activists, organizers, academics, lawyers, educators, health workers and artists, all working together to create a shared vision and policy agenda to win rights, recognition, and resources for Black people
“The organizations that started M4BL were a combination of long-standing institutions like the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), the Highlander Research and Education Center, and Dream Defenders that have been fighting for civil rights and racial justice, mixed in with groups that were fomented in the uprising of the previous years in light of Trayvon Martin and Rekia Boyd’s deaths and other tragedies in Chicago. It was a real intergenerational mixing of Back-led groups coming together in a particular moment,” said Long, who, until February of 2019, was M4BL’s only full-time employee, as the group’s leadership is made up of the heads of the many groups operating under the M4BL umbrella.
“Now we get to pay people for what they’re worth and pay them for their labor and build infrastructure for ourselves, which ultimately is infrastructure for the Movement. The influx of funding this summer and long-term commitments have allowed us to put a basement on our work and provided us with the resources we need to build the walls and the roof to become a longstanding institution,” said Long.
Learn more about the Movement for Black Lives at m4bl.org.
