Embedded in our country’s history is a compulsion for criminalization– and today, this propensity has reached new heights. Across state and national levels, we, the people risk being criminalized for exercising our first amendment rights, pursuing life-saving and -affirming health care, and engaging civically. This comes as no surprise, and the shifts philanthropy must make are clear. The consolidation of state power relies on suppression, with escalating acts of surveillance, imprisonment, and disenfranchisement positioned as forms of protection against difference and disagreement.

Since the founding of our democracy, criminalization has been a stain on our history. But it has been, and continues to be, employed and nurtured by those seeking to systematically devalue the rights and dignity of certain members of society. These cumulative actions pose an existential threat to our democracy, yes; they also signal something far more concerning. Criminalizing groups of people based on their racial and ethnic identity, gender identity, legal status, or political affiliation clears the path for their exclusion from society. Today’s escalation of immigration enforcement is a prime example of this strategy: neighbors taken from their front yards; children dying in custody; protestors attacked, journalists arrested. With each new act, our country’s long-standing prison industrial complex is supplemented with a deportation industrial complex—and beneath it all, a story, new and old, is being told about who is deserving of safety and belonging in America.

As funders, we must tell a different story about shifts philanthropy must make–one that grounds our democracy-saving work not just to defending free and fair elections, but more broadly securing the safety of all by dismantling the conditions that allow for the discarding of any group of peoples.

These are the beliefs which inspired Just Futures and its reflection of the shifts philanthropy must make, Borealis Philanthropy’s newest funding Initiative, which aims to resource community safety and justice as a cornerstone of democracy. Based on lessons from the groundbreaking work of the Communities Transforming Policing Fund and Spark Justice Fund, Just Futures urges four strategic shifts that our sector must make to defend democracy by investing in community safety, justice, and belonging.

4 Shifts Philanthropy Must Make to Support Democracy

1. Community Innovation Works. We Must Fund It.

Communities impacted by injustice have long been the birthplaces of policy change, related to one of the shifts philanthropy must make. Over-policed communities of color often create, innovate, shape public will while organizing communities and public institutions to reimagine new strategies for safety and justice. From restorative justice hubs to non-police crisis response teams, this work is already happening–and working.

Read the full article about a democracy rooted in safety and belonging at Borealis Philanthropy.