Crossroads Fund Community,
The events of 2020 have made it abundantly clear that the world as we know it is no longer sustainable, and that our institutions are not serving the many. Author and political activist Arundhati Roy described the pandemic as a portal, and that is indeed a fitting metaphor for 2020. On one side lies the failures of essential systems to provide for people and the inevitable results: millions of deaths due to mishandled public health efforts; social uprisings against generations of state sanctioned violence; devastating fires and floods from climate change and environmental degradation; and national elections that simultaneously repudiated harmful policies while also endorsing centrist beliefs that will not get us to the collective liberation that this moment demands. We acknowledge these widespread harms while inviting you to step through the portal to explore the other side and discover what else is possible.
Crossroads Fund and our grantee partners are committed to building a just world. Each year we are honored to collaborate with these grantees who are already working toward a new future. Every day they inch closer to a generative, supportive, and sustainable society that works for all people. They organize, build power, and cultivate joy while also mitigating the harms caused by extraction and violence. This work includes:
- Reimagining economic systems that prioritize people over profits by establishing and educating communities on cooperative economic models
- Ensuring housing is a right by halting evictions, demanding rent control, preventing gentrification, organizing to utilize vacant public housing, and demanding community benefits agreements that prioritize long time-residents alongside new development
- Addressing the carceral systems head on by removing police from schools, demanding the reallocation of resources from the police to communities, ending money bond, and cutting ties between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and city government to stop deportations
- Creating culture through film festivals, performance, photography, video, and music
- Caring for people and cultivating solidarity through mutual aid, food, and cash assistance
We are proud of all the 136 strong, committed, courageous and unapologetic grantees; for all that they do in the spotlight and behind the scenes. They are all essential in the work of movement building and paving the way toward a future world that we all deserve.
Jane Kimondo
Executive Director
