The 1934 General Strike. The Free Speech Movement. The Black Panthers. The Chicano Movement. The Gay Liberation Front. The Coalition on Homelessness. The history of Bay Area activism is long and deep.

It has become almost a cliche but it remains true: many of the same things that Bay Area people were fighting for in the 1960s (and the 1930s, 70s and 80s), they are fighting for today. For example, the Black Panthers’ 10-Point Program, written in 1966, included self-determination, full employment, decent housing, free healthcare, education that teaches the true history of Black and oppressed people in the U.S., and an end to police brutality. Fifty-five years later this agenda remains relevant – and unrealized.

Photo: Young Women's Freedom Center              

Local activists continue to organize, mobilize, and build the political power of their communities towards a vision of a Bay Area that is truly accessible, equitable, safe, and welcoming for all.

As noted in our introduction, people living in the Bay Area suffer from some of the highest levels of income inequality in the country. Wages have not kept up with the costs of housing, healthcare, and childcare, and there are holes in government safety nets. There is concern that the Bay Area will see a raft of evictions and a rise in homelessness when the statewide eviction moratorium ends on September 30, even with the Governor’s promise to pay landlords full back rent.

In some of the most expensive counties in California, thousands of people and families – the artists and small business owners, retail and hospitality workers, daycare providers and nonprofit professionals – are on a knife’s edge, one missed payment away from their lives being upended.

Grassroots organizers and advocates are working on multiple dimensions of the Bay Area affordability crisis. Housing, of course, is a primary concern; organizations like ACCE Action (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment) and Causa Justa:Just Cause are focused on keeping working-class communities of color in their homes through winning renter protections, eviction moratoriums, rent forgiveness legislation, and pushing local and regional government to prioritize housing and tenant rights. Organizations like Jobs with Justice focus on workers’ rights and protections in traditional sectors and for the ever-growing contingent workforce of independent contractors, temporary and part-time workers.

Beyond affordability, activists and organizers are fighting to make their neighborhoods and communities healthy, safe, and places of belonging. As we learned in our Climate Action theme, communities of color and low-income communities are hit first and worst by climate change and the air pollution that contributes to it. Community-rooted organizations like APEN (the Asian Pacific Environmental Network) and PODER (a past grantee and a member of current grantee California Environmental Justice Alliance) are just two frontline organizations building the power of immigrant and refugee communities to advocate for healthy, clean environments. Immigrant rights and protections, and redirecting resources towards community-based violence prevention and mental health are all areas of activity. Systemic issues like tax reforms are likewise on the agenda, to fund the policies that activists are advocating for.

The full context of these issues of economic, racial, and climate justice is immense. The issues are symbiotic and they can not be siloed; we do not mean to suggest otherwise with a short, very incomplete list of priorities and representative organizations. As grassroots organizers have been saying for years, their constituents do not lead single-issue lives. They are building alliances across issues and designing collective agendas and strategies. As trusted messengers, they are building bases within their own communities … and these bases show up for each other.

In addressing the systemic, overlapping, regional issues facing the Bay Area, Battery Powered believes that the most impactful use of our funds is to invest in the advocacy of communities that are most affected by them. We believe that supporting these communities to have voice and agency in determining solutions is, in the long-term, a powerful and leveraged way for our modest but meaningful funds to help bring about long-lasting change.

California’s record budget surplus, an infusion of federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act, and new political and public will offer an unprecedented opportunity for Bay Area activists and organizers. This is a moment to leverage their decades of community-based work, leadership development, and relationships with elected officials to advocate for municipal policies – and, critically, municipal budgets – to help make the Bay Area a place of beauty, belonging, and opportunity for all.

SamTrans bus art by artist Vida Kuang, part of the transit agency's initiative to feature anti-racism artwork on buses and shelter in support of the AAPI community. Photo: SamTrans via Bay Rising.

When it comes to supporting the grassroots, what’s needed most is unrestricted support for organizations building the social, political, and economic power of communities of color, immigrant communities, and working-class communities. Unrestricted support helps organizations remain stable and responsive – as fellow funders like the East Bay Community Foundation’s ASCEND:BLO initiative, Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s LatinXCEL Fund, and the multi-donor California Black Freedom Fund attest. Also important is giving organizations the option of structuring grants so they can lobby for their communities' public policy priorities.

Arts and culture, narrative and stories, are powerful tools for social change. Given our focus on artists and cultural practitioners, cultural organizing is an area of special interest. Cultural organizing can take many forms. Collaborations between creators and grassroots organizations in support of a specific campaign or movement are probably the most familiar. But cultural organizing also can look like artists creating content to shift public beliefs and build public will for change (Battery Powered grantee the Center for Cultural Power is a leader here); integrating local cultural practices and forms of expression into community organizing; and engaging community members in culturally-rooted artmaking for the purpose of collective healing, imagining new possibilities for community futures, and envisioning new structures for systems that have done harm to those communities.