William Jackson Harper: If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. -- Frederick Douglass.
Maureen Sebastian: "The North Star," Douglass's abolitionist newspaper, was named after the skyward guide, which people who escaped slavery followed on their journey through the Underground Railroad. This paper and the potent symbol of freedom it represented, was the inspiration for the name of a social justice foundation created in New York City in the 1970s.
This is North Star Fund.
Multiple Voices: We are a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing led by communities of color, building power in New York City and the Hudson Valley. We organize people across race and class to give in support of these movements.
We envision a world in which resources and power are equitably shared and a future where everyone can live with dignity and thrive.
An audio montage of protests related to housing justice, incarceration, and low-wage worker organizing in different settings and multiple languages.
Risa Sarachan: A Guide to Freedom: A North Star Fund Podcast.
Maureen: Episode One: No Struggle, No Progress.
Jennifer Ching: How are you both doing? How has it been going?
Risa: That's Jennifer Ching.
Jenn: Hi, my name is Jenn Ching and I'm the executive director at North Star Fund.
Maureen: This is also Jennifer Ching at a benefit event for the North Star Fund.
Jenn: So tonight is my very first time giving a comedy routine. But do not worry. I'm very, very used to telling awkward jokes into extremely uncomfortable silences.
Risa: Before her breakout as a comedienne, Jenn practiced law for over 20 years, working on cases with a wide range of issues from criminal justice to immigrant's rights to civil rights to housing. She became North Star Fund's executive director in 2017.
Jenn: Are you tired of talking to all of us? (Laughing)
Maureen: No, we are actually, like we wish these interviews were longer. We just want to keep having more conversations.
Maureen: That's me. Maureen Sebastian.
Risa: Yeah, it's been really inspiring. And that's me, Risa Sarachan.
Maureen: Together we created a podcast.
Risa: Gulp Podcast.
Maureen: Where we tried to humanize headlines by delving into the extraordinary struggles ordinary Americans face day in and day out.
Risa: Gulp Podcast led us to interviewing North Star Fund's Deputy Director, Elz Cuya Jones.
Elz Cuya Jones: Racial justice is not just my 9:00 to 5:00. It's my 24/7.
Risa: Which led us to a commission from North Star Fund to create a podcast for them.
Which brings us back to this conversation with executive director Jennifer Ching.
Jenn: Well, again, so appreciate you diving in with all of us through this project. So, you know, I think it's so exciting to think it just even from our earlier conversation, like the things we learn when someone from the outside is talking to us and then actually processing our work. So I'm just very excited to see what comes of it.
Risa: What came of it is North Star Fund's Annual Report in the form of a limited series podcast exploring the organization's intricate, multilayered ecosystem. On it, you'll hear Maureen and me talking with people about how they found their way to the North Star Fund and what working through the pandemic and the protests in New York City has been like. Not to mention the upcoming election.
Maureen: After planning, researching and conducting interviews with staff, donors, former grantees and volunteers, what came of it is this recent phone call I had with Risa.
Maureen: This is because I feel like our journey is that like, you know, do this annual report for North Star Fund and we dive in and then we just start learning about like, basically, how to be an active participant in the social justice movement and not just with money, but in all of the ways that North Star Fund asks its community to be active.
Risa: We thought we were outsiders visiting North Star Fund to report on all the incredible achievements this organization we so admire has had in the last year. But what came of it, for us, was a meaningful and necessary education about social justice and a transformation into true believers of what North Star Fund does.
Maureen: What came of it was a guide to freedom. But let's go back before the call, before we knew what came of it, to our first attempts at understanding. Their website says, "North Star Fund is a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing led by communities of color building power in New York City and the Hudson Valley."
Risa: Since we've already interviewed her, I think I know who we start with.
Risa: We are so excited to talk to you.
Maureen: Yes, we love an Elz interview. We have been known to love an Elz interview. (Laughing)
Elz Cuya Jones: My name is Elz Cuya Jones. I am a deputy director at North Star Fund.
Maureen: Okay, so North Star Fund is a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing. Why grassroots organizing, specifically?
Elz: The reason why it's so important to give and to support is because the only people who've ever made change in the history of this country, are the people who have been most impacted by injustice, are the grassroots folks who have taken over the leadership and power dynamics that existed that have been oppressive. It will not be the oppressive leadership and the status quo that's going to suddenly wake up and see how badly they've been doing for the people and change their minds and suddenly become benevolent people. It's going to require us to be loud and to not allow them to continue to do it. So it is up to us. And in order for our grantees to continue the work they require the resources. And if you're gonna choose where to give, say if you can only give to one place, I would say support grassroots organizing, because that is where the real change happens.
Maureen: OK. North Star Fund is a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing led by communities of color. Why does the organization have to be led by communities of color?
Elz: So we fund community organizing. And what that means at North Star is we fund work that is led by the people who are most directly impacted by injustice. And when you allow those people to lead and when you give them the resources that they need, we will find that they have the solutions to the problems that they face, more so and more deeply so, more effectively than folks who are not directly impacted by the issue.
And so that's one thing. The others include like, making sure that the organizing work is creating leaders within a team within the community. So, it's not about one charismatic leader who has an incredible Twitter following and can give eloquent speeches. But if the way in which they're doing their work and they're building their campaigns and mobilizing people is also building up leadership from their members, then we want to support that. The other thing is around decolonizing fundraising. So we want to democratize the way that our movements are funded. And we want to change the dynamic of white people with wealth and power supporting our movements in such a way that we are dependent on these communities, rather than working in partnership with them. So while we love and want white allyship, we also know that there is more power and greatness to be had, if people of color are able to fund their own movements. Like that, is the path to true liberation for all of us is if we are in it together.
Maureen: Did she just drop the phrase decolonizing fundraising?
Risa: What does decolonizing fundraising even mean?
Maureen: And how are they able to do any of this work in the current moment during a global pandemic?
Jenn: Many times and in conversations these days when people reference the urgency of the current moment.
Risa: Jennifer Ching again.
Jenn: First of all, I often have to take a step back and ask which urgency exactly are you meaning? Because we're living in a time of deeply intersecting multiple urgencies. We have a democratic crisis of no known proportion in the United States history. We are at a climate justice crossroads, we have already lost the numerous interventional points in which real and protective change could have happened. And so we're at a point now where we must, you know, rapidly take action to mitigate the already existing and proliferating damages. We exist at a time where the racial wealth divide is at its greatest and is rapidly, rapidly multiplying. You know, 10 people in the world have half of the world's wealth.
So there there is just for me, the question is now maybe the time of urgency, because we are also confronting a global pandemic where there have been mass disproportionate deaths experienced by, you know, Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities in particular. So certainly we have exposed our system and our systemic failures for what they are. But I guess when people say, well, what - what's to be done?
What's to pivot right now for North Star Fund in this time of urgency? I'm not sure that there is anything for us to pivot. I think more what we have felt as an organization and a community is that this is the time for us to sharpen and deepen our practice and our discipline. This is the time for us to really demystify grassroots organizing and all of the calls to action that our community of grantees and activists who are involved with the fund have been saying since the fund's founding 40 years ago. This is the time for us to more intensively connect people who are becoming activated or perhaps who have been activated for some time, but just not sure how to plug into supporting social justice movements for, you know, us to really widen our doors as much as possible and to say and to make clear that we all have a role in reshaping certainly New York's future. Certainly our community's future. And what we do in New York has not just a ripple effect, it has a titanic effect for the rest of the world.
Maureen: There is a lot to grassroots organizing that I don't fully understand. I mean, I know I definitely get overwhelmed by all these calls to action. And honestly, I have no idea where to even begin this journey. And it's very embarrassing and incredibly shameful to admit that I'm really just getting on board. And as Jenn said, these activists and organizers have been fighting this fight for so long.
Risa: Honestly, I'm still stuck on "decolonizing fundraising".
Maureen: Okay, okay. Maybe we can find the answers within the interviews we've conducted.
Kofo Anifalaje: My name is Kofo Anifalaje. I am the development director at North Star Fund.
Kesi Foster: My name is Kesi Foster. I am a member of the board and I'm also a co-chair of the Community Funding Committee.
Jillian White: My name is Jillian White, and I am the donor organizer at North Star Fund.
Gabriela Quintanilla: My name is Gabriela Quintanilla, and I am the Hudson Valley program coordinator here at North Star Fund.
Adrienne Wong: My name is Adrienne Wong. I am a writer and organizer and I got involved with North Star when I joined the Giving Project. And since then I've been involved as a donor.
Catherine Eusebio: My name is Catherine Eusebio. I'm the program officer for North Star Fund.
Margie Fine: My name is Marjorie Fine and I started with North Star way back in the 80s. So I've had a lot of roles and I'm so happy to be back now, as chair of the board. It's a pleasure, an honor to work with Jennifer, all the staff and our board.
Maureen: Margie's been around for the long haul.
Margie: I want to give props to the people that started the organization and that it's rooted in community organizing and knowing who is the constituency we're organizing and how are the ways to bring them in. Whether that is poor people throughout the five boroughs and the Hudson Valley or it's donors who are looking for a place to live out the values they have. And to put their money to work for justice and in a good way. So I think we've evolved and gotten stronger and stronger.
Maureen: To really understand this organization's evolution with the same wisdom and the same depth that Margie has, I think we have to go back even further.
Risa: To the part about decolonizing fundraising?
Maureen: To North Star Fund's origin story.
Jenn: You know, North Star Fund was founded just over 40 years ago.
Risa: Jennifer Ching again.
Jenn: In the late 70s and early 80s. And for folks who are newer to the city or younger, they may not recall that that was the time of the city's most serious municipal economic crisis. North Star Fund was founded in many ways in response to the municipal crisis of the 1970s, which was a historic, unprecedented disinvestment in communities of color and in the various, you know, array of support services and infrastructure that are essential to communities. And at that time, the fund's founders knew that one of the areas that was being completely ignored by philanthropy, government alike, was the grassroots sector, that it was grassroots voices and grassroots leaders who were calling for myriads of different types of reforms that were required for a city coming out of, like, literally digging its way out of its worst economic and socio cultural crisis.
So fast forward to 2020. And some would argue that New York is already in and or now confronting its worst economic crisis, that in many ways we were already kind of seeding such a crisis with disinvestment in our public transportation, with the incredible wage gap between the service economy and sort of the hedge fund economy within the city, that the growing, just living gap had already created all of the pre-COVID sort of circumstances that - that the sort of glass city would just shatter. And we saw, of course, in the COVID pandemic, you know, how can it be that in a city with this incredible array of resources that thousands and thousands of people would die of COVID and that the vast majority of our neighbors and residents who died were Black or Latinx or Asian? So, we're in, unfortunately, almost as if in some ways replaying some types of history that even propelled and created North Star Fund in the first place. So why am I optimistic? Well, I'm optimistic because I don't think that history just operates in a loop, in a circle. You know, what is that saying this Santayana, saying, you know, I don't think that we're doomed to repeat everything all the time. I do believe that ruptures can create incredible movements, can, as we were saying earlier, can redirect and build new intentions and commitments from our broader base of people. And I do feel right now a broader base of New Yorkers are seeing that we need to to change course.
Risa: Jennifer's absolutely right. As the pandemic heightened and the murder of George Floyd ignited protests in cities around the world, I found myself giving more than I ever have before.
Maureen: According to Paul Sullivan in his New York Times article, "Philanthropy Rises in the Pandemic, and Donors Heed the Call for Help," two reports show that Americans gave at a rate and a level that eclipsed donations during the 2008 recession. And after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Which brings me to-
Risa: Decolonizing fundraising.
Maureen: You got it, Risa.
Elz: We need white allies and white partners in this work.
Maureen: Elz Cuya Jones.
Elz: Black liberation and social justice isn't a project for BIPOC folks to lead and manage all by ourselves. It's going to take everyone. And when you look at this philanthropic landscape and the percentage of dollars that come from where and who... for sure, many of the dollars come from white philanthropy. North Star Fund's development team right now, we are 100 percent women of color, daughters of immigrants. If you look around, like most philanthropic organizations, the development team, is white, it's led by a man. So we really need our white allies to open doors for us to help us democratize philanthropy and get money in the door so that we can continue supporting the work that we do.
Risa: With funds so often allocated incorrectly or frivolously or not at all. How do we decolonize philanthropy?
Maureen: Well, when we read we begin with ABC. In this podcast, we begin with philanthropy.
Risa: Philanthropy?
Maureen: Philanthropy, Risa.
And girl it is broke as (expletive)
Maureen: Thanks so much for listening.
If you'd like to learn more about North Star Fund and the incredible work they do, please go to wwww.NorthStarFund.org. We'd like to give a special thanks to Jennifer Ching, Kathleen Pequeño, and Angbeen Saleem for their guidance and support in creating this podcast. And to all of our interviewees, Jillian White, Adrienne Wong, Kesi Foster, Marjorie Fine, Catherine Eusebio, Gabriela Quintanilla, Kofo Anifalaje and Elz Cuya Jones. For additional audio, we'd like to thank Damayan, Adhikaar, Right to Counsel, Worker Justice for NYC, Release Aging People in Prison Campaign and Public News Service. For lending his immense talent and dulcet tones a huge thanks to William Jackson Harper. We'd also like to thank our magician of an audio technician, editor and sound mixer Dan Crowley. The North Star Fund Podcast was created by Maureen Sebastian and Risa Sarachan and produced by Maureen Sebastian and North Star Fund.