Giving Back to the Black Community
February is Black History Month and we hope you join us in our effort to support, educate, and fight for equality in this country. We have compiled this list of Bay Area-specific nonprofits, activist organizations, and other causes to which you can give your time or money. These organizations cover a wide variety of campaigns, programs, and direct services that fight racist inequities in our society.
Activism
Critical Resistance Oakland
Critical Resistance is a national grassroots organization building a movement to abolish the prison industrial complex. The Oakland chapter organizes towards this goal through activism and education here in the Bay Area.
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights organizes with black, brown, and low-income people to shift resources away from prisons and punishment, and towards opportunities that make their communities safe, healthy, and strong.
Interrupting Criminalization
Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action is a project that aims to interrupt and end the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color. The project provides research and data analysis to support local grassroots organizing efforts.
Wealth and Disparities in the Black Community – Justice 4 Mario Woods
Justice 4 Mario Woods advocates for victims of police violence in San Francisco and organizes to enact reforms that will prevent it.
Youth Programs and Education
CURYJ
CURYJ, pronounced “courage”, promotes youth activism and leadership in the movement to end mass incarceration and youth criminalization.
Hack the Hood
Hack the Hood empowers under-resourced youth of color with knowledge, skills, and relationships needed to succeed in tech careers. Through mentorship, culturally-relevant knowledge, 21st-century skills, and community partnerships, they help youth become creators of change in their communities.
Hip Hop For Change
Hip Hop For Change is a nonprofit that educates all people about the power of hip hop culture and empowers them with a platform to express themselves through the arts.
Legal Services
The ACLU is a national nonprofit working to defend and preserve individual rights and liberties.
National Center for Youth Law
Headquartered in Oakland, the National Center for Youth Law is a non-profit law firm that helps low-income children achieve their potential by transforming the public agencies that serve them.
TGI Justice Project
TGIJP’s mission is to challenge and end the human rights abuses committed against transgender, gender variant and intersex (TGI) people in California prisons, jails, detention centers and beyond through legal services and peer legal advocacy programs.
Transgender Law Center
Grounded in legal expertise and committed to racial justice, TLC employs a variety of community-driven strategies to keep transgender and gender nonconforming people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation.
Additional Services
The Black Organizing Project is a grassroots organization in Oakland working on issues of racial, social, and economic justice.
Across the decades, Girls Inc. has adapted to meet the specific challenges facing young women. Although times have changed, Girls Inc. has always been and will always be about girls.
People’s Kitchen Collective is a food-centered, Oakland-based political education project offering educational workshops, exhibitions, and community dining events to discuss social justice issues.
People’s Breakfast Oakland
People’s Breakfast Oakland provides direct services and mutual aid to the people of Oakland, providing food, clothing, and other essentials, and recently offering COVID-19 testing.
Roots Community Health Center
Roots Community Health Center’s mission is to uplift those impacted by systemic inequities and poverty through medical and behavioral health care, health navigation, workforce enterprises, housing, outreach, and advocacy.
WestCoast Children’s Clinic
Located in Oakland, WestCoast Children’s Clinic is committed to providing psychological services to vulnerable children, youth, and their families regardless of their ability to pay and to expanding the reach of psychological services through practice and research.
For more ways to get involved, check out The Richmond Neighborhood Centers website, the Bay Area Council for Racial Justice website, and the Charity Navigators website. Each have a multitude of different organizations and ways to help the black community.