[Staff Opinion] Organizers, advocates, and the philanthropies that aim to support them are faced with difficult choices when the needs and injustices around us are so many, so deep, and so crucial. Do you... https://medium.com/meyer-foundation/staff-opinion-rising-waters-and-the-false-choices-we-face-f639af1de53

1/8

Provide temp. rent cancellation + rent relief for neighbors worrying about impending evictions? Or use this moment as the springboard to seek bold structural change in our inadequate “social safety net” and propose stabilizing, longer-lasting economic security strategies?

2/8

Help families w/ limited resources scramble to secure tablets + Wi-Fi for distance learning? Or tackle vast inequities baked into an education system structured through racist policies + underfunded through cycles of austerity to benefit some students + leave others behind?

3/8

Support limited policing reforms offered by newly “awakened” majorities in hopes those reforms make some difference? Or demand a bolder re-imagining of what safety means, disrupt how racist tropes are used to define “threat,” + re-envision how safety + justice are assured?

4/8

Advocate for temp. tax cuts + governmental loans to aid small, low-wealth biz in surviving this time? Or address the way our tax structures compound generations of racist + extractive policies, continually tilting economic scales, stripping wealth from communities of color?

5/8

Resource + conduct safe, specialized outreach around census participation to compensate for failures, fear bolstered by xenophobia, an accelerated deadline, and the pandemic? Or resource longer-term organizing to build a more representative and responsive democracy?

6/8

These are all false choices. We must do both at once and in tandem. When you're in the middle of a great sea + discover rotting wood on the floorboards of your boat, you can't choose b/w bailing out the water or replacing the wood. You must do both and at the same time.

7/8

Read more in our latest on Medium from @SoniaQ_NV - Staff Opinion: Rising waters and the false choices we face: https://medium.com/meyer-foundation/staff-opinion-rising-waters-and-the-false-choices-we-face-f639af1de53

8/8