The Akonadi Foundation today announced the launch of the Oscar Grant Peace and Racial Justice Fund and the immediate availability of mini-grants of up to $500 to support the critical and emerging organizing, advocacy, and cultural work taking place.
On the first day of 2009, a white BART police officer shot and killed Oscar Grant, 22, as the young African American man lay on his stomach with his hands cuffed behind his back. While the officer has now been charged with murder, his arrest took place a full two weeks after the killing, following massive public outcry and an intervention by the state Attorney General. (For more information please go to http://joincape.blogspot.com).
In response to Oscar Grant’s killing, people all across Oakland, the Bay Area, and the country have come together to demand justice. This outpouring of collective action has been supported and guided by the experience, resources, and members of community organizations that have worked for years toward creating a world free of the structures of racism that oppress and brutalize people of color every day.
The Akonadi Foundation’s mini-grants from the Oscar Grant Peace and Racial Justice Fund is available to 501(c)(3) or fiscally-sponsored organizations engaged in community-led action in Oakland in response to the killing of Oscar Grant. Through this fund Akonadi seeks to support the immediate demands for justice and institutional change as well as the long-term movement building this situation can shape.
The creation of this fund is guided by the Akonadi Foundation’s commitment to Leadership of Communities of Color through efforts to achieve racial justice defined and led by the communities of color most effected by structural racism and to Leadership from the Field, through which foundations support and are led by the ideas, innovations, and needs of organizations directly involved in the work of racial justice.
The first round of applications are due 5 p.m. on Friday, January 23.
Visit akonadi.org for more details and information.