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The past few years have seen an explosion of government-initiated programs to promote racial equity. What started in Seattle ten years ago has ballooned to more than two hundred jurisdictions nationally. This phenomena poses a strategic challenge to social change groups on the “outside”, i.e. how to deepen and make this emergence more authentic and relevant to the lives of those most impacted by systemic racism. in-a(d)vance is providing the movement infrastructure to the Grassroots Racial Equity Task Force (GRETF) as it navigates the racial justice waters with Oakland’s Department of Race & Equity.
The relationship of sugar with communities of color globally has been a long and sordid one. From the transatlantic slave trade, to the sugar fields of Hawaii, and the sugar beet migrant trail in the U.S. mainland, people of color have paid with their lives and labor to build the sugar industry. And yet in poor communities around the globe, one of the sugar-saturated products marketed aggressively is soda and similar drinks. This has led to epidemic rates of obesity and diabetes in poor communities of color. And communities have begun to fight back by introducing a Soda Tax against the industry to raise the needed resources to conduct health education and offer alternatives. in-a(d)vance provides the movement infrastructure for initiatives like Oakland’s Sugar Freedom Project to end the grip of corporate sugar on communities of color.
