350 Wenatchee Climate Conversations NCW

Fam,

Welcome to Black Futures Month 2022! For M4BL, Black Futures Month is a visionary, forward-looking spin on celebrations of Blackness in February.

During last year’s Black Futures Month, we released this powerful short film entitled “Black Futures: An Ode to Freedom Summer”, produced in collaboration with our partners at Root Story Films, focused on imagining the truly liberated future we are building together for Black people. In the film, Black people in the future find a time capsule from 2020 Freedom Summer and discover the movement struggle that enabled a new generation to grow up and thrive without the threat of oppression and anti-Black racism. Though persistent violence and exploitation attempt to rob our people of the space to dream, it is essential to our mission that we allow ourselves the freedom and permission to follow our radical imaginations and visualize the world we need and want.

This year, we continue this envisioning by shining a light on the work being done now by our people across the country to build that world.

Throughout February, we will be uplifting Black-led organizations that are doing the work to build real power at the grassroots level as a part of our new Local Power program. Launching in many major cities, this program includes community organizing, electoral justice, base-building, and storytelling to build long-term power for Black communities. At M4BL, we are building the world we need, and Local Power cities are our opportunity to stimulate people’s imaginations.

One element of Local Power cities is alternatives—that is, innovative systems that supplant antiquated and violent institutions like policing and prisons, and that create a model of public safety that works for everyone. For example, Equity and Transformation Chicago is running a guaranteed-income program that provides $500 per month to over 50 post-incarcerated residents of Garfield Park.

We’ll be releasing our Black Futures Month edition of The Tea, our Black queer and TGNCI monthly newsletter, knowing that Black queer and trans people have long been at the forefront of dreaming, visioning, and expanding what is possible for our movements. (Check out our January issue here!)

In this pivotal moment for working people that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ll also be talking about the future of labor for Black people, and what we can do to harness our power together to dismantle oppressive capitalist systems and rebuild something that will serve all of us. As we look to the future, we will also be reaching back to honor those who sacrificed their freedom so that we could have a better future. We will continue uplifting political prisoners facing the terror and violence of incarceration, and sharing how you can support them in their efforts to reclaim their freedom. True liberation for Black people will generate a future in which none of us are left behind.

This Black Futures Month, join us in the journey to dream of our future and engage in building it together. Follow us in your inbox and at our social handles below throughout Black Futures Month. Text FUTURE to 90975 to join the movement dreaming of better.

With love, vision, & solidarity,
Movement for Black Lives

IG: @mvmnt4blklives
Twitter: @mvmnt4blklives
Facebook: The Movement for Black Lives

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