The team at the California Budget & Policy Center, a nonpartisan, data-driven organization with a focus on evaluating public policies and their effect on Californians with low and middle incomes, released the following statement in solidarity with Black communities across California and the nation.
At the California Budget & Policy Center, we stand with our Black colleagues, friends, family members, and neighbors in their demands for racial, economic, and social justice.
We stand with protestors who show us the toll and trauma of structural racism, targeted physical violence, and exclusion from economic opportunities that kills Black Americans and Black Californians on the streets, in their homes, and amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Tony McDade. And before these individuals, Stephon Clark, Joseph Mann, and Mikel McIntyre, in our own state capital.
Black Lives Matter.
The Budget Center team recommits to being an anti-racist organization and recognizes our responsibility to proactively dismantle policies that protect white supremacy, oppress and kill Black people, and inflict greater economic hardship and worse health outcomes on people of color. We also will continue to call for investment in Black communities and communities of color by using the state’s collective prosperity.
We vow to not remain silent in the face of racial injustices and to use our platforms to demand federal and state policymakers stop embedding racist policies in federal guidelines and state budgets, and to undo prior state policies that have blocked Black Californians from fully participating in the state’s economic, social, and political life. The Budget Center team will do all we can to work toward a more just and equitable California and nation.
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