Current Projects
Our projects adapt to the current climate and make us a consistently connected, values-aligned, and accountable organization.
Internal Projects
Crisis Funding
Because Resist is accountable to our grantees; organizations on the frontline of revolutionary political movements, we must adapt to their needs. When the powers that be abuse their power by denying communities access to quality of life; we meet the urgency of the moment with rapidly available resources and a one-question application.
- In 2020, we met the uprisings for the Movement for Black Lives with $10,000 in funds for Black-led frontline groups.
- In 2022, after Roe v. Wade was struck down, we quickly redistributed $15,000 to 15 grantees ready to do everything in their power to protect bodily autonomy and reproductive justice.
- In 2023, we supported the international movement to end the Zionist genocide in Palestine by moving over $40,000 to Palestinian-led groups organizing solidarity efforts.
Redefining Investments
Resist invests in what we want to see grow – which is frontline communities. Our foundation has fully divested from the traditional stock market and sits on no endowment to provide more immediate abundance to grassroots organizations fighting for a better world.
In 2022, we finalized pulling out $2 million dollars from traditional “socially conscious” stocks, and reinvested half a million dollars directly into purchasing land for grantee and community use (see Community Movement Commons project).
Radical Philanthropy
Resist believes we must organize within philanthropy to help us shift toward more restorative and transformational ways of funding as a whole. We engage in the funding community to talk about our work – how we shift decision-making power to former grantees, have no string-attached funding, operate without an endowment, redefine investment to not include financial returns, listen to grantees and create additional resources for them.
External Community Projects
Movement Sustainability Commons
Founded by Resist and the Center for Economic Democracy, MSC nourishes and sustains people and groups working for justice, economic democracy, and liberation. They do this by offering affordable, high-quality services, practices, spaces, and pathways that support both interdependence and self-reliance for community self-determination.
Community Movement Commons
CMC exists to give birth to a just, liberated, and sustainable world through building a birthing and community center. Our collective of organizations: Resist, Center for Economic Democracy, Matahari Women Workers’ Center, Sister’s Unchained and the Neighborhood Birth Center have purchased land in Boston for the use of building Boston’s first birth and community center, for birthing people, grassroots groups, healers, artists, community members, and more.
Other Projects
Justice is Essential
History tells us that folks coming together, organizing themselves at the grassroots level, and standing up for systemic change is the only way to create a better world.
At Resist, we know that frontline leaders and groups that work for justice and liberation have the heart, knowledge, and tools needed to reimagine and co-create a better world for us all. In 2020, amidst a global pandemic, climate change, rising costs and uprisings against police brutality, our staff collective hosted the #JusticeIsEssential series.
The three-part conversation brought together movement leaders, creatives, and elders to discuss what organizing for the new world looks like, the importance of healing justice and spiritual resistance, and the role creative resistance plays.
In 2022, we expanded the conversation virtually and with an in-person gathering in Boston. We came together to celebrate, reflect on, and think about the book: FREEDOM DREAMS: THE BLACK RADICAL IMAGINATION. The conversation took place between with Robin D.G. Kelley and Nyle Fort and discussed themes around revolutionary struggle and transformation, the spiritual force and fortification of movements, and what we can continue learning from freedom dreamers and fighters in our quest for liberation.
Videos
Organizing for the New World
Healing Ourselves Free
From Survival to Liberation: How Creative Practice Shapes Movements
20 Years of Freedom Dreams
Amplify Series
To get you closer to the frontlines of radical community organizing across the country, Resist created the Amplify Series. Each piece in the series highlights the work and members of one Resist grantee, up close and personal. Grantees are paid a stipend for their labor.
