Black Lives Matter Grant Recipients

Our Fundraising Priorities

In June, the congregation decided to dedicate $100,000 of our annual budget toward funding organizations fighting beside us to secure rights, aid and justice for Black people. We’re sharing the donations we’ve made so far—both to be transparent and accountable, but also to lift these organizations up as wonderful places to which you can donate as well.

Make Good Trouble Rally in D.C.: $10,000

Equal Justice Initiative: $10,000

Black Women’s Blueprint: $5,000

Black Fem: $5,000

Black Voters Matter Fund: $5,000

Elaine Legacy Center: $5,000

DFW #BlackLivesMatter Relief: $5,000

Fair Fight: $5,000

Feed the People Texas: $5,000

NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: $5,000

New Alternatives NYC: $5,000

Partners Uplifting Our Daughters & Sons: $5,000

She The People: $5,000

We Act for Environmental Justice: $5,000

Audre Lord Project: $2,500

Hope For Haiti: $2,500

Black Chef Movement: $2,500

Crown Heights Mutual Aid: $2,500

The Gathering for Justice: $2,500

Greene County African American Museum: $2,500

Loveland Foundation: $2,500

Action Items

Join Middle’s Voter Reform Group by emailing votingproject@middlechurch.org

Lift up the work of Communities United for Police Reform and the Movement for Black Lives in their efforts to defund the police and reimagine community care.

Donate to Middle’s fund for Black wellness. (Specify “in honor of Black wellness”)

If you want to support protestors right now, email Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft.

Cultivate Black joy and center rest. And remember that rest is active resistance.

Here’s a list of steps employers can take to create an antiracist workplace.

Remember that antiracist work is God’s work. Remember that—for those of us who are Christian—we cannot follow a man who was lynched by the state if we do not fight against the ways our country is systematically killing Black people.

Resources

To get you started, here’s an incredible antiracist syllabus compiled by Ibram X. Kendi.

Articles

Stop Blaming History for Your All-White, All-Male Movie by Aisha Harris, February 6, 2020

The Fight Over the 1619 Project is Not About Facts by Adam Serwer, December 23, 2019

The Fight to Redefine Racism by Kelefa Sanneh, August 12, 2019

The 1619 Project, August 2019

Reckoning With Violence by Michelle Alexander, March 3, 2019

Black Women’s Faith, Black Women’s Flourishing by Eboni Marshall Turman, February 28, 2019

Blackface Is Just One Part of the Problem by Jamil Smith, February 4, 2019

The Heresy of White Christianity by Chris Hedges, December 10, 2018

Why Jews Should Support Reparations for Slavery by Rabbi Sharon Brous, March 7, 2018

DACA, Harvey, and Charlottesville: This Is An Emergency by Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Ph.D., September 8, 2017

Confronting #WhiteSupremacy With #RevolutionaryLove by Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Ph.D., August 13, 2017

Race, Money and Politics: Connecting Some Dots by Rev. John Janka, April 6, 2016

Being Brown While Black Lives Matter by Rev. Dr. Miguel De La Torre, August 29, 2015

Profiling Act by Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Ph.D., August 10, 2015

I Am Black, and Black Lives Matter by Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Ph.D., August 10, 2015

The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates, June 2014

Letter From Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr., April 16, 1963

Books

America’s Original Sin, Jim Wallis

Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley

Borderlands, by Gloria Anzaldúa

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Can We Talk About Race?, Beverly Tatum

Citizen, Claudia Rankine

Coming Together in the 21st Century, Curtiss DeYoung

The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone

Dismantling Racism, Joseph Barnett

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, Austin Channing Brown

The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander

Race Matters, Cornel West

Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, Kelly Brown Douglas

The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson

White Rage, Carol Anderson

White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo

Art/Film/Television

Purchase Rev. Jacqui’s widely acclaimed racial justice workshops in our online store!

Watch PBS Chapter and Verse series on race. Jacqui Lewis interviews national faith leaders.

Documentary 13th on Netflix

Loving

Moonlight

Selma

Fruitvale Station

Do the Right Thing

If Beale Street Could Talk

Podcasts

Women. Talk. God.

1619 Podcast

The Stoop

The Nod

Hope and Hard Pills

Sermons

400 Years: A Reflection on Liberty by Jacqui Lewis

What’s Love Got to Do with It? by Jacqui Lewis

A Conversation on Race by Traci Blackmon

#StayWoke by Otis Moss III

Holy Blackness: The Matrix of Creation by Wil Gafney

Organizations

Advancement Project

Black Lives Matter

Color of Change

NAACP

SPLC

Standing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)