The City of Durham on Thursday debated allotting $1 million to Forward Justice, a social justice activist group.
Following local agendas, even without knowing exactly what you’re looking at, can reveal a lot of interesting nuggets.
The City of Durham says it has received more than $50 million from the American Rescue Plan. That was a roughly $1.9 trillion bill from the 2021 “Covid relief” drives that disguised a lot of political wish lists.
The city has been slowly allocating pieces of it for years and have until December 2024 to allocate it all. Pretty much every agenda features at least one of these allocations to community groups, often for fewer than six figures.
Thursday’s work session, though, revealed a pretty interesting proposed grant recipient.
| 9. American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Project – Transformative Justice Program |
| To authorize the City Manager to execute an ARPA subrecipient grant agreement with Forward Justice, Inc. in an amount not to exceed $1,000,000. |
| (Resource Person: Bertha T. Winbush – 919-560-4222 ext. 11234) (PR# 16541) |
The full memo from the city, with history and jargon-filled rationale, can be read here. The city actually already gave the organization $1 million last year.
But if you analyze the language and the organization, you begin to wonder if it’s really editorializing to describe it in the following way?
The City of Durham is looking to allocate $1 million to a social justice activist group … essentially under the guise that working together and building relationships is part of public health.
Is that really editorializing?
The Forward Justice website can be reviewed here.
Some quotes from the document will be quoted below, without commentary.
“Forward Justice’s ‘Transformative Justice Program’ seeks to base programming on central understanding and needs to invest in the healing and wellness of underrepresented communities, such that programming will offer ongoing and rotating classes and trainings.”
Community Education: Harm Free Zone restorative & transformative justice training, community advocacy, and policy education towards collective action.
Goal – Train community members to learn alternative methods of accountability, care, and connectedness.
… collaborates with partnerships to support the advancement of racial, social, and economic justice …
Forward Justice has served as a strategic partner for other nonprofit organizations, coalitions, and networks for a more just, equitable, and free United States South. Forward Justice will work to prioritize the care and healing for underserved communities disproportionately impacted by
COVID-10 [sic] to provide interdisciplinary, culturally rooted, comprehensive resources and leverage long-term self-sufficiency capacities for under-resourced and historically excluded Durham residents and formerly incarcerated people.
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