INDIANAPOLIS AFRICAN AMERICAN QUALITY OF LIFE INITIATIVE (IAAQLI) ANNOUNCES FIRST ROUND OF GRANTS

Grants will fund programs and initiatives to improve the quality of life for African American residents

INDIANAPOLIS, IN – (August 1, 2022) The National Urban League has selected 40 Indianapolis/Marion County not-for-profit organizations as the first recipients of grants from the Indianapolis African American Quality of Life Initiative (IAAQLI). The organizations represent 52 grants awarded with funding totaling more than $21M. The initiative is a partnership between the National Urban League, the Indianapolis Urban League, and the African American Coalition of Indianapolis.  IAAQLI was created in 2020 through a $100M grant to the National Urban League from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The awards follow intensive community conversations and analysis of the most critical issues impacting the quality of life for African Americans within Indianapolis /Marion County. The focus of funding is to help non-profit organizations implement IAAQLI’s goal, which is to support effective programs, policies and ventures that will make measurable improvements in the daily lives of African Americans. The National Urban League awarded grants to organizations whose programs, services, and advocacy will address historic inequities existing within Indianapolis’ Black communities.  “As a place-based racial equity initiative, this is a historic opportunity that comes with a sound commitment to make a change and eliminate longstanding education, economic and social disparities for African Americans in Indianapolis/Marion County”, said National Urban League President, Marc Morial. 

“For the past two years, the IAAQLI team has spent countless hours listening to the concerns of our African American community,” said Indianapolis Urban League President and CEO Tony Mason. “This first round of funding will provide a wide range of organizations with the resources to create and implement sustainable programming to address the issues our community has identified.”

“The time is now,” added African American Coalition of Indianapolis Chair Willis Bright. “This is just the first of many steps the IAAQLI is committed to taking as we strive to eliminate disparities and conditions created by decades of systemic racism. We encourage the entire community to follow our progress and to invest in organizations such as those we are funding and others working daily to eliminate disparities in health, education, and other areas, and stay tuned for the announcement for our second round of funding this fall.” 

To learn more about the Indianapolis African American Quality of Life Initiative and review a complete project listing along with descriptions visit www.iaaqli.org.

Listen to the live announcement on Tuesday, August 1, 2022, with remarks from National Urban League President and CEO Mark H. Morial, President and CEO of the Indianapolis Urban League, Tony Mason, and grant initiative leadership.

Grants in the first round of funding are to the following organizations:

About the National Urban League

The National Urban League is a historic civil rights organization dedicated to economic empowerment in order to elevate the standard of living in historically underserved urban communities. The National Urban League spearheads the efforts of its 92 local affiliates through the development of programs, public policy research, and advocacy, providing direct services that impact and improve the lives of more than 2 million people annually nationwide. 

About the Indianapolis Urban League

The mission of the Indianapolis Urban League is to empower African Americans and disadvantaged individuals to achieve social and economic equality and improved quality of living through programs, services, and advocacy in education, workforce development, entrepreneurship, health, and housing. 

About the African American Coalition of Indianapolis

The African American Coalition of Indianapolis (AACI) is a non-partisan collaboration of African-American civic, social, professional, service, and community organizations with a goal to educate and engage African Americans in the local, state and national political process.

NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE: PRESIDENT BIDEN’S EXECUTIVE ORDER ON POLICING IS A “NECESSARY STEP FORWARD” BUT LAWMAKERS MUST WORK TOWARD COMPREHENSIVE REFORM 

INDIANA LAW TARGETING THE BAIL PROJECT

FACES LEGAL CHALLENGE OVER CONSTITUTIONALITY

INDIANAPOLIS (May 4, 2022) – The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana is suing the state of Indiana over the constitutionality of a new law targeting The Bail Project.

NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE PRESIDENT AND CEO

CALLS ON THE SENATE TO PASS LEGISLATION

TO PROTECT ROE V. WADE

Washington, D.C. (May 4, 2022) – Today, National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial issued the following statement in response to the leaked U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade:

“The initial draft opinion by Justice Alito is both horrifying and unprecedented. For nearly 50 years, Roe v. Wade has allowed women the right to choose what to do with their bodies and when to start their families. If Roe is overturned, nearly half of states would likely outlaw abortion services, putting the millions of people in those states at risk of being without important health care services. Access to safe abortion services has proven over time to discourage women from exploring unsafe methods to end their pregnancies, especially women in underserved communities or who have experienced the trauma of abuse, rape, or incest.

“While this news is upsetting, we must keep in mind that the document released was only a draft and not a final decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court. Patients who have made their appointments will still be able to receive the care and services they need. The Justices on the Supreme Court still have an opportunity to respect the rights of women to control their own bodies by reversing course and upholding Roe. And the Senate still has an opportunity to codify Roe by passing the Women’s Health Protection Act, which we call on it to do without further delay.

“Until then, the National Urban League stands with all women who will be impacted should this leaked decision be made final. Abortion and other reproductive health services are health care, and it is imperative that we protect women’s access to health care and their freedom, regardless of personal beliefs or political party affiliation.”

How a diverse coalition in a red state shut down anti-CRT legislation

By Giselle Rhoden, CNN
Updated 4:00 AM ET, Sun April 3, 2022

(CNN)Parents and teachers were shocked after an Indiana state senator introduced a bill requiring that teachers remain neutral when teaching about Nazism. And in less than two days, a coalition to defeat the bill was born.
“Within 36 hours, we had organized over a dozen community members and partners to testify against the bill,” Jennifer Smith-Margraf, the vice president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, told CNN in March.
Members of the Indiana community spoke at hearings, met with legislators and posted on social media to speak out against Sen. Scott Baldwin’s support of Senate Bill 167.

The bill was later pulled from the education committee’s schedule in the Senate, however, its successor — House Bill 1134 — created even more of an uproar, not just among Indiana educators, but among a wide range of interest groups in the state.

The bill, which some Republicans called anti-CRT (critical race theory) legislation, prohibited “teachers or other employees to use supplemental learning materials to promote certain concepts regarding sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin.”

Supporters said the bill would give parents more say on what their children learn in school, but critics saw it as censorship.

The Indiana bill caught the attention of a diverse group of educators, business owners, parents and community leaders from across the state, and that coalition successfully defeated it in February. However, more than a dozen other red states have passed similar legislation.

Since January 2021, 42 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an Education Week analysis.
Across the country, Republican lawmakers are pushing legislation banning CRT in public schools even though it is not taught in K-12. CRT is an academic concept that is usually offered in graduate-level courses, but in the past year, it has been conflated with diversity and inclusion efforts as well as with debates on how to teach race and history.

Last month, Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law a bill described as a prohibition on CRT. Senate Bill 2113 prohibits teaching “that any sex, race, ethnicity, religion or national origin is inherently superior or inferior” in public schools. Mississippi became the 15th state to pass legislation limiting how teachers can discuss racism and sexism. The bill does not explicitly mention CRT in its language, but Gov. Reeves said in a statement that CRT was a threat to public school education which inspired him to sign the bill.

And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem recently signed legislation banning the state’s public universities from using training and orientation materials that could cause racially based “discomfort.”

A Movement Grows

Indiana public policy adviser Marshawn Wolley said the coalition to fight HB 1134 was unlike anything Indiana had seen before.

“We had nearly 200 speakers signed up to testify against the bill — members and community partners,” Margraf said. “The Senate Education Committee limited testimony on the bill during that hearing to just over 2 hours, so only 20 some of the folks signed up to testify were called to speak.”

The coalition represented a variety of views. Wolley, who is a parent, told CNN that he could not imagine letting his son go through a system “where teaching is impartial.”

Although the bill did not explicitly mention CRT, Wolley said it attacked the principle of teaching about race in the classroom.

Nationwide, Black parents have said that their voices and the concerns of their children have been lost in the partisan debate about CRT. So the Indianapolis Urban League, the Indy Black Expo, and African American Coalition of Indianapolis helped devise strategies to bring Black parents to the Senate floor during the hearing.

Read more click and scroll down to A Movement Grows

Civil Rights Leaders Reflect on the 57^th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday 

 Washington, D.C. (March 6, 2022) – Leading civil rights organizations issued the following joint statement to reflect on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday and to urge Congress to remain focused on protecting the fundamental right to vote for the American people:

“As thousands gather in Selma, Alabama for the 57th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, we are reminded that our right to vote–the right that sparked the infamous march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the right that Americans were beaten and died for–is still under assault.

“President Biden made it clear during his State of the Union address that in order to ensure our right to vote is protected and counted, Congress must do everything in its power to pass the protections that were included in the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, which would:

• Restore Section 5 preclearance formula under the Voting Rights Act that stops discriminatory voting changes before they are implemented;
• Restore the vitality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to remedy vote denial or dilution of the right to vote for people of color;
• Adopt common-sense safe and secure measures to expand voting access like early voting, same-day voter registration, and Election Day as federal holiday; and
• Address the inequities in our voting system by allowing for early voting, automatic voter registration, and increased access for individuals with disabilities.

“Although these bills are designed to address racial discrimination in voting, they will also benefit Americans of all races, ages, ethnicities, and political affiliations. Now more than ever, the need for federal legislative intervention could not be more urgent. We call on every member of Congress to put partisanship aside and defend our Constitutional right to a safe and fair electoral process.

“States across the country have passed dozens of voter suppression laws. In Alabama, 23 bills have been introduced that would allow for excessive voter purging, permit racial and partisan gerrymandering, and encourage voter intimidation, and implement stricter voter I.D. requirements. Just last month, the United States Supreme Court allowed Alabama to implement a redistricting plan that would limit the voting power of communities of color. There is a shameful, anti-democratic effort being undertaken by partisan state legislatures to impede and restrict our most vulnerable populations from voting. These cynical efforts to preserve political power at all costs are a threat to our democracy and need to be challenged directly and undeniably.

“Without congressional action, legislatures in states like Alabama will continue to threaten our democracy by limiting access to the ballot. As civil rights leaders, we will never stop fighting to preserve and defend the right to vote–the one generations before us have bled and died for right here in Selma. Our democracy is at a crossroads and the time has come for Congress to do the right thing.”

This statement was signed by the following organizations:

• National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial
  
  

• The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, interim President and CEO, Wade Henderson
  
  

• Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, President and Executive Director, Damon Hewitt

• National Action Network President and Founder Reverend Al Sharpton

• NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson
  
  

• National Council of Negro Women Executive Director Janice L. Mathis
  
  

• National Coalition on Black Civic Participation/Black Women’s Roundtable President and CEO Melanie Campbell

• NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) President and Director-Counsel Sherrilyn Ifill

NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE:
CIVIL RIGHTS CONVICTIONS OF MINNEAPOLIS OFFICERS
BRING THE NATION CLOSER TO
DISMANTLING THE BLUE WALL OF SILENCE

NEW YORK (February 24, 2022) — National Urban League President Marc H. Morial today said the conviction of former Minneapolis police officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane on federal civil rights charges brings the nation a step closer to dismantling the “blue wall of silence” that allows police corruption and misconduct to thrive.

“We are beyond tired of hearing apologists dismiss every horrifying example of racially-motivated police violence that comes to light by claiming a few ‘bad apples,’” Morial said. “The fact is, bad apples do spoil the whole barrel, and officers who fail to intervene when their colleagues transgress are just as responsible for the rot.”

Criminal prosecutions of police officers are rare, and prosecutions of those who enable corruption with their silence or inaction are even rarer.

“These officers watched as their colleague crushed the life from George Floyd and did nothing to stop him,” Morial said. “They did nothing to save his life or to ease his suffering. That’s both a sin and a crime by any standard and today’s conviction sends a clear message that such callous indifference has no place in law enforcement.

The case points to the urgent need for police departments to reform the unofficial culture of retaliation that allows misconduct to persist and wrongdoers to avoid accountability. Officers who call out their colleague’s misbehavior are likely to find dead rats in their lockers. According to a USA Today investigation, those who enforce the blue wall of silence “have stuffed dead rats and feces into fellow officers’ lockers. They’ve issued death threats, ignored requests for backup, threatened family members, and planted drugs on the officers who reported wrongdoing. Whistleblowers have been fired, jailed, and, in at least one case, forcibly admitted to a psychiatric ward.”

“It’s unconscionable that these officers chose to save their own jobs over saving a man’s life, but they should not have had to make that choice,” Morial said. “With this verdict, police departments are on notice that the blue wall is crumbling and will no longer hide their shame.

Indianapolis Urban League Still Opposes HB 1134: Education Matters with Amendments 

Everyone needs to understand that passage of HB 1134 will come at an economic price
that will be paid by our state and our citizens over time.

INDIANAPOLIS (February 16, 2022) – Today, Indianapolis Urban League President and CEO Tony Mason issued the following statement regarding HB 1134, Education Matters, now being considered by the Senate:

The Indianapolis Urban League (IUL) rises in opposition to HB 1134, now being considered by the Indiana Senate after substantial revisions and amendments. Reducing the bill’s list of divisive concepts within the proposed legislation from eight items to three does not lessen our disapproval.

Two of the anchor ideological pillars of the Indianapolis Urban League’s Five-Point Empowerment Strategy are Education and Youth Empowerment and Civil Rights and Racial Justice Empowerment. These commit the IUL to actively working to eradicate all barriers to equal participation in all aspects of our society, whether political, economic, social, educational, or cultural. IUL would be negligent in its responsibilities if it were to support any legislation which attempts to diminish or white-wash the significant role that historical and ongoing racial discrimination, bigotry, and systemic racism have had and continue to play in Indiana and in America’s evolution as an inclusive and evolving democracy.

While we salute the effort of Senator Rogers to attempt to make this bill more palatable, the fact is it remains a bad solution in search of a problem that does not exist. IUL still does not see a need for this legislation; which some lawmakers claim originated in response to complaints from concerned parents. When the Indianapolis Urban League asked members of the House Committee how many formal, official complaints had been filed against schools for teaching “divisive comments” or “Critical Race Theory”, they could not point to a single complaint filed with either the Indiana Civil Rights Commission or the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. We should all be cognizant that this legislation will require concurrence by the House which may worsen the current product.

The truth remains the same. Critical Race Theory is not being taught in grades K-12. Attacking teachers and making it possible for parents to still potentially pursue complaints and /or lawsuits in other legislation because of the discomfort of our children learning historical and documented facts about racism, discrimination and inequities will have a chilling effect on teachers and their ability to teach the truth about the lived experiences of African Americans and other People of Color, past and present, in Indiana. It will also have a chilling effect on teachers teaching unifying concepts related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The focus on this measure at a time when educational achievement gaps that have placed the state of Indiana near the bottom nationally in educational outcomes that are widening, is beyond inexcusable.

In closing, everyone needs to understand that passage of HB 1134 will come at an economic price that will be paid by our state and our citizens over time. Our state and our school districts were already losing teachers at an alarming rate prior to this legislation; this bill will accelerate and worsen our teacher shortage and education quality. Corporations will have no choice but to reconsider their employee recruitment and hiring goals within our state resulting in less quality, good-paying jobs for Hoosiers statewide. Emerging industries or sectors like technology and biological sciences may have to reconsider their growth strategies and investments in Indiana because of the resulting educational and social climate. Our state’s tourism will be negatively impacted eventually if cultural and social groups, faith-based entities, professional associations, or sports organizations such as the NCAA have to reconsider Indiana cities as host sites for their events and organizations because many of these organizations embrace education, diversity, equity and inclusion as part of their operating principles. The economic impact of this truly short-sighted legislation will be immense. When this happens, do not blame Indiana teachers for teaching so-called “divisive concepts” – instead, blame legislators who supported this legislation and for choosing to follow a national playbook that will only undermine every effort and strategy aimed at improving Indiana’s image and positioning for economic growth over the last 50 years.

HB 1134 must not be accepted by the Indiana Legislature as our state will eventually see significant losses in our economic, social, and human relations progress built so intricately over many years.

Respectfully,

Tony Mason President & CEO