[image description: large, bold, black letters read “Black Lives Matter” on a yellow gradient]

Black Lives Matter.

May 28, 2020 — By sammie

Just so we’re clear: Black lives matter. Black trans lives matter. Black history matters. Black power matters.

We’re outraged and saddened at the constant violence and brutality against Black people–a violence that has been happening since the inception of colonialism itself. Police violence is just one arm of the war against Black people. Black folks in this country, and especially Black folks living at the intersections of trans, queer, disabled, homeless, migrant, and poor, are fighting on all fronts: from housing, to education, to employment, to criminalization, and even to crisis response during COVID-19.

We, as trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders, believe that everybody has a role in dismantling anti-Blackness. We dismantle by having conversations, sharing political education, fighting to defund the police, advocating for healthcare resources, supporting Black trans people, and closing jails. We dismantle by interrupting racism within our own communities. We dismantle by listening directly to the leadership of Black people. Our movements directly benefitted from the long legacy of Black resistance and organizing, and it is up to us to CHOOSE solidarity as an active verb, with the understanding that none of us are free until all of us are free.

In this moment we grieve George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, and Breonna Taylor. In this moment, we re-commit to the work.

[Updated 5/30/20] We also wanted to share some ways to get involved, especially in supporting Black-led groups in Minneapolis and in Louisville. Credit to APIENC member and Asians4BlackLives member, Claudia Leung, for most of the things compiled on this list.

Calls to action from Black-led groups in Minneapolis and beyond:

  • Petition to defund the Minneapolis Police Department: bit.ly/DEFUNDMPD — led by Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block. 
  • George Floyd’s family GoFundMe
  • Minnesota Freedom Fund — A bail fund supporting protesters that have been arrested.
  • CTUL — A low-income worker of color-led organization (mostly Latinx) down the block from where George Floyd was killed, who have been offering a lot of mutual aid to protesters.
  • Northstar Health Collective — street medics treating people and training folks how to take care of each other in protest. 
  • Black Visions Collective — a Black basebuilding organization in Minneapolis offering mutual aid and lifting up visionary solutions (more on them below)
  • Reclaim the Block — A coalition to demand that Minneapolis divest from policing and invest in long-term alternatives.
  • MPD 150 — a Minneapolis-based org lifting up abolitionist thinking and research.
  • Louisville Community Bail Fund — the local Black Lives Matter group is collecting funds for folks who have been arrested during the uprising for #JusticeforBreonnaTaylor