Our Statement on George Floyd’s Death, Nationwide Protests and the Work Ahead

The death of George Floyd — and far too many souls before him — is a dev­as­tat­ing reminder that Amer­i­ca is not a land of lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all. Even in 2020, the col­or of one’s skin still dic­tates one’s des­tiny. Time and again, the actions of the peo­ple and sys­tems whose aim should be to pro­tect and serve our com­mu­ni­ties reflect the deeply held, per­ni­cious beliefs and behav­iors that were inten­tion­al­ly woven into the fab­ric of our nation from its ear­li­est days. This dis­crim­i­na­tion and bias have robbed count­less black men, women and chil­dren of their hopes, dreams, health and very lives.

Tear­ing down these and oth­er obsta­cles that stand in the way of America’s chil­dren and youth of col­or is cen­tral to the mis­sion of the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion. We can­not cre­ate the brighter future we envi­sion for all chil­dren if we do not ensure every young per­son — black, brown and any oth­er col­or — has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ize his or her full poten­tial. And that requires dis­man­tling the bar­ri­ers and trans­form­ing the very sys­tems, poli­cies and prac­tices that per­pet­u­ate dis­crim­i­na­tion, lead­ing to the same trag­ic out­comes we’ve wit­nessed most recent­ly in Min­neapo­lis, as well as in Fer­gu­son, our home­town of Bal­ti­more and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties across the nation.

We must be relent­less in our pur­suit of this goal. We must advo­cate for sys­temic change, show­ing what can be accom­plished — in pub­lic sys­tems and insti­tu­tions, as well as our own orga­ni­za­tions — when we make an inten­tion­al, con­cert­ed effort to address racial inequities and chal­lenge our lead­ers and our­selves to be and do better.

The Foun­da­tion has long been part of this strug­gle to achieve equi­ty, togeth­er with part­ners all over the coun­try, and we remain com­mit­ted to this hard but absolute­ly essen­tial work. Now is not the time to give up but to press for­ward. We must chan­nel our feel­ings — out­rage, grief, hope — into action, and we encour­age and invite oth­ers to join us.

Across the world, we already see that action in the form of peace­ful protests against police bru­tal­i­ty, call­ing out injus­tice. For our part, action means con­tin­u­ing to use data and tar­get­ed strate­gies to dri­ve change. It means engag­ing, equip­ping and ele­vat­ing the voic­es of mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. And it means doing every­thing we can to help trans­form our nation into a place where every child and indi­vid­ual have the free­dom to belong, to live with­out the dai­ly threat of fear and vio­lence and to walk in the world with dig­ni­ty and respect.

We know that the Foun­da­tion alone can­not trans­form sys­tems and com­mu­ni­ties. To empow­er pol­i­cy­mak­ers, com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers to advance equi­ty in their own work, we have made our lessons avail­able for all.

Access Casey’s Racial Equi­ty Resources