Ames Simmons: Things White People Can Do To Show Up In This Moment

Policy Director Ames Simmons offers resources for fellow white people in the movement against police brutality.

Over the past week, I have struggled with how best to be a co-conspirator and accomplice with Black, Indigenous, People of Color folks while there is a pandemic going on. Normally I would be out in the streets protesting peacefully, but I'm in one of CDC's "high-risk" groups for COVID-19, and many of you may be in the same place. Here are my top three ideas for how we as white people have to show up in racial solidarity:

• If you can't be at protests, support those who were: Donate to bail funds. Support the QTIPOC fund and directly support queer and trans people of color who are struggling financially because of the pandemic and the failure of systems that we as white people created and benefit from.
• Do your own work! It is so important to understand history with a critical race theory lens, but you don't have to have a PhD to do it! Read Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, listen to the "Scene on Radio" podcasts, work through Me & White Supremacy and The Racial Healing Handbook. Educate yourself so that you're not inflicting your "well-intended" ignorance on people of color around you.
• Offer to hold space for black and brown people right now. Your colleagues of color may seem like they're alright, but they probably aren't, and maybe looking for signals from you that you are in solidarity.