SUSTAINABILITY AND THRIVABILITY: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
Hello and happy Giving Tuesday to all of our supporters and lovers of Cherry Grove! 2021 was a launching pad for BaBEC’s truest thrive ever and we are excited to share with you how your past, present and future donations can continue to help us sustain and thrive.
Painting of the Beach Solidarity March by Adam Chuck
PAST
We are so grateful to have had an amazing summer 2021. BaBEC hosted one of the largest and most diverse weekends of the entire summer with Juneteenth Fire Island. As a small organization with huge dreams, a lot of people didn’t think we could do it. But not only did we do it, we blew it out of the water!
We are so thankful to have had the community step up for us and help us raise nearly $30,000! That money was used to cover operational expenses that our board had been paying out-of-pocket for the previous year, expenses for Juneteenth and over $10k was paid to BIPOC individuals who helped us before, during and after Juneteenth weekend.
At the end of our relationship with our former fiscal sponsor, The Arts Project of Cherry Grove, there was approximately $10k leftover to be used in good faith to support our mission.. Despite repeated requests in the five months since our contract ended, APCG has not provided BaBEC an accounting of the remaining funds. We are most concerned about the charitable contributions that we promised you and our partners to make for community redistribution. We committed to donating funds to Gay Against Guns, The Northstar Fund and Black Trans Femmes in The Arts. We have yet to receive an accounting of said contributions. We are in active conversation with APCG on resolving this matter.
Given the above, your donation today is incredibly important, as financially, our organization is essentially starting from scratch.
PRESENT
OUR SITUATION IS NOT OUR DESTINATION and we are empowered to lace up our bootstraps and do what we 👏🏽 do 👏🏽 best 👏🏽!
That includes engaging the community and our supporters in Cherry Grove and beyond to uplift us in our pursuit of equity and making Cherry Grove a place where Black, brown and transgender people are heard, welcomed and celebrated.
We are an activist organization who will not hide behind the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” the way so many organizations do. We are specific about who we are advocating for and we will not do it in a way that prioritizes white comfort. Seeing our advocacy in action was a shock to a lot of people last summer. Seeing our response to the police being invited to march in the Cherry Grove Pride Parade for the first time ever and on the same weekend as Juneteenth was a shock to a lot of people. Seeing me use the word “racist” last summer was a shock to a lot of people.
Do you know what was a shock to me? Experiencing that racism.
How can we fight against something that we can’t name?
The energy in the movement for Black lives shifted between 2020 and 2021. It is not lost on me that in 2020, millions of people were sharing books by Black authors that we should read, and yet in 2021 there is an entire movement to ban those books from schools. In 2020 many people learned about Juneteenth and its history for the first time, and yet in 2021 there is legislation being pushed forward in multiple states to not teach Black history (aka American history) in schools. Cherry Grove was not exempt from this shift in energy. Never in history have people of color come into predominantly white spaces asking for equity and not been met with pushback.
BaBEC will not be the caretakers of those who want to stay asleep. We are committing to being radically transparent because working in the shadows is the way that gatekeepers have always maintained their ability to gate keep.
Your donation is helping us to break down barriers and shining a light in dark places!
FUTURE
For summer 2022 BaBEC plans on expanding into a community membership organization. For the past two years we’ve utilized salon style conversations to have teaching moments and to get feedback from the community on what you would like to see us do.
BaBEC wants to bring Unconscious Bias Training to the community. Last summer we were denied access to the Cherry Grove Community House to provide this training. We were told that we could use the space if BaBEC turned over the initiative to APCG, including all of the contacts, resources and footwork we had done to make it happen.
Now we need your imagination and assistance in developing new ways to host our initiatives. Do you have a house or a pool deck that we can use? Please reach out! Have you always had an idea for the use of a public space that we could possibly implement. Shoot us an email! Part of the beauty of next summer will be the ways and places in which we can show up and claim space.
We are also excited to bring back our second annual celebration of Juneteenth Fire Island. Beyond June 19th, 2022, we are working on ways to make Cherry Grove more accessible all summer long. We are excited about the new leadership and energy in the Cherry Grove Community Association and hope to be able to work with them on ways to accomplish this.
Your donation today is helping us continue to create a more accessible and welcoming future for Cherry Grove.
BaBEC is a movement, not a moment. We are thankful to have allies who are strong when we are vulnerable. We are excited and grateful to have you with us on our quest for sustainability and thrivability, now and in the future.
Sincerely,
Tomik Dash
President
Black and Brown Equity Coalition
