It was the mirror that the civil rights legislation provided in the 1960s that revealed the deep bias against non-white immigration from Asia, Africa and South America, ever since the country’s founding. Did you ever wonder why it was only recently that there were immigrants from India and Africa who settled in the United States? Primarily a phenomenon of the past fifty years, the diversity of immigrants was primarily due to the push by civil rights activists to broaden the inclusiveness of the immigration quotes to non-white countries, to outside of Europe.

A co-founder of the organization, Hindus for Human Rights, Raju Rajagopala in his article, “Indian American on the Matter of Black Lives”, writes honestly and poignantly on how one Indian-American experienced race and class over the past fifty years. What is critical, as he points out, is how much Indian-Americans owe the Civil Rights Movement for their ability to immigrate to the United States, post-1966 and how much this should be remembered by Indian-Americans and should lead to supporting the black lives matter movement now and in the future.

[https://www.hindusforhumanrights.org/blog/indian-americans-on-the-matter-of-black-lives]

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A brilliant Tamil-American anthropologist, Anand Pandian, a Professor of Anthropology, at Johns Hopkins University, explains the subtleties of why America is burning to a Tamil-Australian audience in Tamil. He does a great job.

Here is the program. He explains the long history of unequal race relations in the United States that simmer just underneath the superficial, commercial growth that America likes to present itself exclusively as. That 40 million people have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, that the growth in white supremacist language/culture has exploded since Trump took office, that lynching itself is historically ingrained into the very cultural fabric of the United States, these all create the conditions of a tinderbox, a flame that spreads very fast. This audio interview is in Tamil.

https://www.sbs.com.au/language/tamil/audio/why-is-america-burning?fbclid=IwAR1T2yJU9Mu7BNfKyc0qTG9mso9uO6iu6u0ZH7F63BDTMNAG79HDC_ptChA

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A conglomeration of anti-racism resources gathered together by young people came into my hands recently, so I wanted to share this document. It has a amazing list of places to donate funds in the San Francisco Bay Area, petitions to sign, where to go for local protests, and what books, films and audio programs may help all of us understand the deep racism in our white supremacist culture. Please pass on forward, if you feel moved to.

Dear Neighbor,

You are likely aware of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis this past week and the continuing injustices facing protestors at the hands of police in cities across America. We also want to bring awareness to the recent murders of Breonna Taylor (Louisville), Tony McDade (Tallahassee), and Steven Taylor (San Leandro), and many more in the 24 hours since I wrote this letter. These are not isolated incidents, but rather represent a long history of police brutality against Black people in the United States. Here in North Berkeley, we enjoy the benefits of living in a wealthy, primarily white area.

It is our duty to use the resources and privileges we’ve been granted to help create change. But we can’t do it alone, and that’s why we’re asking for your help. Below, we have listed numerous places to donate to and some courses of action to take. As residents in a neighborhood largely unaffected by these forms of violence, we hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to be a good ally and actively fight racism.

Places to Donate: Bay Area
• Bay Area Anti-Repression Bail Fund: https://rally.org/arcbailfund
• People’s Breakfast Oakland, a grassroots Oakland org providing bail and legal support to folks right now and always serving homeless people in Oakland: www.linktr.ee/PBO
• Black Earth Farms: @blackearthfarms on social media, Venmo @blackearthfarms, Ca$happ: $blackearth
• Anti-Police Terror Project, Oakland-based organization: http://www.antipoliceterrorproject.org/donate
General Locations
• Black Visions Collective, a Minneapolis-based organization committed to transformative justice and building sustainable Black activist leadership: www.bit.ly/supportBlackVisions
• Official George Floyd Memorial Fund: www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd
• Black Lives Matter: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019
• Louisville Community Bail Fund: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/louisville-community-bail-fund/
• Northstar Health Collective, an organization providing medical support to protestors: https://www.northstarhealthcollective.org/donate
• Contribute to multiple community bail funds at once (and feel free to research your own!): https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd
• A list of other funds to look up if you’re excited about these can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Gwl9omY8l5dUCkK4Y2llKAsfx5asES9zWn4Tr27QhTU

Petitions to sign and emails to write:
• Defund the Police: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/2005_email_blm_defund
• Text FLOYD to 55156 to sign the petition to demand the officers who killed George Floyd are charged with murder.
• Text TONY MCDADE to 484848 to sign the petition to demand the release of body cam footage and bring charges for the officers involved with Tony’s death.
• I run with Maud: www.runwithmaud.com/#petition
Accountability: Make calls to police departments. Use your voice.
• An incredible google doc by the Atlanta Resistance Revival Chorus compiling phone numbers, email addresses, petitions, and more that you can use to demand justice for the deaths of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and David Mcatee: www.bit.ly/BlackLivesAction (case-sensitive). This document includes a list of what to do, who to email, who to call, and scripts for everything.

Go to Black-led and organized protests if you and/or members of your household are not immunocompromised. Now is the time for non-Black people to be putting their bodies on the line. Make sure to wear a mask, stay physically distanced, and research responsible sanitation protocols. I CANNOT stress this enough: be extremely careful about sharing photographs from any action you attend. After the Ferguson protests in 2014, the photographers received Pulitzers and the activists were murdered. By releasing photos of activists’ faces, clothes, tattoos, etc., you are putting them at risk. These are just a couple of the upcoming events in the Bay Area, but events are popping up all the time. They can often be found on Facebook.
• June 4, 5:30pm @El Cerrito Police Department
• June 5, 11am @VIRTUAL: make calls with Cal Democrats: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/7725163866
• June 6, 1pm @civic center park and the Berkeley Police Department. Sit-in.
• June 6, 3:30pm @Malcolm X Elementary School: family friendly funeral procession march

Talk to your family members about racism and educate yourself with these resources.
Read:
• Testify by Simone John
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.
• Are Prisons Obsolete and Women, Race, & Class by Angela Davis
o Free PDF of Are Prisons Obsolete: https://bit.ly/2m6ihNa
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
• Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Banaji Mahzarin and Anthony Greenwald
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
• Swing Time by Zadie Smith
• Antiracism Resources compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein: www.goodgoodgood.co/anti-racism-resources
Watch:
• “The urgency of intersectionality” TED Talk by Kimberlé Crenshaw (Youtube)
• 13th: Ava DuVernay’s 2016 film about the criminalization of Black people (Netflix)
• When They See Us: Ava DuVernay’s film about the Central Park Five (Netflix)
• If Beale Street Could Talk: Barry Jenkins 2019 film (Hulu)
• Blindspotting: 2018 film set in Oakland starring locals Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal (rent or buy)
Listen:
• “1619” podcast from the New York Times
• The Impact podcast: “Leaving Baltimore behind”
• “Code Switch” NPR podcast
• “Intersectionality Matters!” hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw

This list is just a starting point. We encourage you to continue researching more ways to learn about racism, how it operates in America, your role within the system, and what you can do to actively work against it. Don’t just quote MLK and Desmond Tutu: act on their words.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
– Desmond Tutu

Thank you for your action! An online version of this document (with clickable links) is at https://tinyurl.com/NorthBerkeleyLetter
If that doesn’t work, the full link is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d6hdcReQvioBP7hF9GhamJbQ-ZCrtI9qH9RN3e6e9pU



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