Since the start of colonization, African Americans and Native Americans have endured ongoing grief and violence leading to intergenerational trauma and social inequities that persist today. This includes land dispossession, enslavement, human trafficking, forced assimilation, and much more, emphasizing the need for community care.
These oppressive legacies of colonization and imperialism manifest in harmful ways. Unfortunately, mental health challenges, feelings of hopelessness, and substance use disorders (SUD) can arise due to these systemic and environmental stressors along with intergenerational trauma.
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 127,000 (11.5%) Native American adults live with co-occurring mental illnesses and substance use disorders, and the number is 2.4 million (7.8%) in the African American community. For both communities, alcohol and tobacco products are the leading substances.
Despite centuries of displacement, disinvestment, and disrespect, historically resource-deprived Communities of Color have always organized to freedom fight and support each other. From marronage, to the American Indian Movement and the Black Power Movement, we have helped each other.
At a time of political and social uncertainty, we must share and protect spaces that promote community care, organizing, and healing. Oppressive systems will not save us.
The Black Wall Street Times compiled a list of Black and Indigenous-led collectives, organizations, and spaces that are doing the work nationwide.
Revolutionary Healing
Founded in 2020 by Afro-Indigenous Oglala Lakota tribal member, YoNasDa LoneWolf, Revolutionary Healing is an intentional space for community care and self-healing.
Through music, culture, health, mental wellness, and community, Revolutionary Healing offers monthly outdoor events every third Sunday in Georgia.
The collective also hosts an annual Friendsgiving Festival to raise awareness about Native Americans for Native American Heritage Month.
SNCC Legacy Project
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is still alive and well in the flesh and digitally. SNCC’s Legacy Project acknowledges and honors the Freedom Fighters of the 20th century while connecting yesterday’s struggles with today.
In addition, the project hosts free in-person and virtual Freedom Teaching sessions, where participants explore the legacy of civil rights struggles and apply lessons to contemporary issues like voter suppression and racial justice. They also have an extensive digital database with lesson plans and toolkits.
Journalists of Color and Writers and Editors of Color
According to the Pew Research Center, 76% of journalists are white, and 6% are Black. To help with isolation, a community of journalists joined to create the resourceful Journalists of Color website and Slack team. The collective’s mission is to provide a space for journalists of color to feel safe, seen, and valued.
Founded by Dr. Allison Wiltz, Writers and Editors of Color (WEOC) is a digital publication and collective of writers and editors who focus on creating and uplifting stories for and by Communities of Color nationally and internationally.
WEOC hosts community spaces every Sunday on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Treme Recreation Community Center
Tremé, New Orleans, Louisiana is the oldest Black-neighborhood in the United States.
The Treme Community Center holds a rich history like the Tambourine and Fan curriculum created by Jerome Smith and Rudy Lombard. It was also an early venue for Bounce music and artists to prosper.
The Center is a city-run facility offering an arts and crafts room, yoga classes, hip-hop shows, indoor pooling, talent shows, community clean-ups, and more.
SHAPE Community Center
In 1969, Houston’s African American community formed the SHAPE Community Center. It initially provided programming foundations for the local Civil Rights Movement.
The community center is a beacon of light focusing on community care on the Southside of Houston offering after-school enrichment, Summer day care, a self-care program for elders, and the Community LUV Food Security program.
In addition, their space is used for mission-driven community activations, events, and programs.
Fightingville Fresh Market
Founded in 2019 by Kevin Ardoin, Kimberly Culotta, and Nicole Johnson, Fightingville Fresh Market is a neighborhood garden and farmers’ market.
Located in LaPlace, a historic Creole of Color neighborhood in Lafayette, Louisiana, Fightingville Fresh Market reconnects the community with its agricultural roots, empowering residents through food sovereignty and shared cultural practices.
The market offers free workshops, garden-building workdays, seed exchanges, free plants, a Double Up Food Bucks program, a Grow Your Groceries program, free plants, and so much more.
Black Futures Farm
Co-founded by Mirabai Collins and Malcolm Hoover, Black Futures Farm is a community-building program and production farm a part of the Black Food Sovereignty Coalition. The farm is located on un-ceded Clackamas and Multnomah First Nations Territory.
From May to October, Black Futures Farm hosts weekly “Black Sundays” where Black folks gather, celebrate, learn, and grow together. In addition, they offer Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) through REACH and happily accept volunteers.
Their mission is to heal the impaired relationship between Black people and the land.
West Oakland Woods Farm
Operated in West Oakland, California, West Oakland Woods (WOW) Farm has produced vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers for over 20 years.
Acta Non Verba, a youth urban farm project, currently operates the produce site. Through WOW, high schoolers learn how to operate a small farm business.
In addition, the students learn how to plant and harvest organic crops, business economics, teamwork, professionalism, and more. The farm has community garden plots, picnic areas, play structures, cultural art installations, and an outdoor stage.
The Okra Project
Black Transgender women and men can face intense socioeconomic barriers with little to no support. The Okra Project is a Black Transgender-led nationwide mutual aid collective.
As a public charity nonprofit, they provide housing security, food security, mental health, and safe transportation for Black Trans folx.
“Today, okra is often associated with health, prosperity, and community in Black cooking traditions. As such, The Okra Project represents the nourishment and sustenance that we seek to provide to Black Trans people through our mutual aid efforts,” they shared.
Harriet’s Wildest Dreams
Founded by Nee Nee Taylor, Makia Green, and Qiana Johnson, Harriet’s Wildest Dreams is a Washington, DC-based, Black-led abolitionist community defense hub. Their work includes legal empowerment, civic and political education, campaign organizing, and community care.
The organization believes, “Freedoms of Black people in America cannot be won through the continued exploitation of Black people throughout the diaspora and specifically Black woman, gender expansive folx, LGBTQIA kin.”
Show up for yourself through Community Care
Communal self-care collectively nurtures individuals who are a part of the collective. These spaces are essential for Communities of Color to repair our overall health and well-being.
Activists and community organizers are strongly encouraged to take part in community self-care. Community care supports movement building, culturally-aligned counseling, mutual aid, decolonized education, organizing, spiritual development, and other proven methods.
In addition, many of the organizations offer some free and low-cost programs. Genuinely helping and guiding one another as we rebuild ourselves and our community creates abundant positive change.
In the words of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, “People have got to get together and work together. I’m tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.”
Additional Resources for Community Care
- Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM)
- Therapy for Black Girls
- Indigenous Women Rising (IWR)
- National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN)
- Soul Fire Farm
- Black Urban Growers (BUGS)
- Sacred Earth Circle
- Brown Girls Do Ballet
- RYSE Center
- Chinook Center
- The Laundromat Project
- IllumiNative
- The Normal Anomaly
- Dream Defenders
- The Highlander Research and Education Center
- The Red Nation
- HEARD (Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of Deaf Communities)
- Color of Change
- Native Wellness Institute