Help These Groups Fighting Against Racial Inequality in Trump's America

This year, it’s important to call out the various organizations on the ground making a difference in their communities. From encouraging people to get involved in local politics to providing free HIV testing, to empowering LGBTQ youth, to supporting black women who have suffered from sexual violence. Here’s how you can help these organizations continue making strides in black communities.

Black Voters Matter Fund says its purpose is to boost the power in black communities, while noting that “effective voting allows a community to determine its own destiny.” This sentiment was echoed by its cofounder, who stressed that black voters everywhere matter.

“Our main goal is to build power in black communities,” Cliff Albright, cofounder of Black Voters Matter Fund, told VICE Impact. “We believe that we have to demonstrate that black voters matter 365 days a year.”

Check out more videos from VICE:

The Georgia-based organization has a goal this year to spread their efforts to five states in the South and one in the North.

To support the Black Voters Matter Fund this month and year-round, you can make donations,and also join in on their efforts. Volunteers are always welcome.

Race Forwardwas founded in 1981 with a focus on creating racial equity by providing people with the necessary tools to eliminate structural racism.

“Our work is centered around transforming institutions, dismantling structural racism, and partnering with communities to use policy, culture, and narrative to advance racial justice,” Glenn Harris, president of Race Forward, told VICE Impact. “Two of our primary, long-term goals are to help move a national narrative around race and democracy while simultaneously developing a framework and approach for advancing racial justice that reinforces ideas of racial inclusivity, plurality, and the importance of democracy.”

In addition to publishing the news site Colorlines, the organization also hosts the Facing Race National Conference, a space for alliance building and collaboration, which will be held Nov. 8-10, in Detroit.

As someone whose great uncle was part of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, Harris says he knows the profound impact the government and other institutions have on the lives of black people. “I realized that if we want justice and equity, then it’s essential that we transform the institutions that impact our lives,” he explained.

Check out Facing Race’s site to learn more about the conference. You can also donate to Colorlines and Race Forward. For even more involvement, you can register for an interactive racial justice training in a city near you to learn ways to address and change structural racism.

Inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., the Poor People’s Campaign abides by 12 fundamental principles, which all make up its “call for moral revival” to challenge systemic racism, poverty and beyond.

With several chapters across the country, they hope to mobilize and inspire while shining a light on the status of poverty today. The organization seeks to unite the “the poor and dispossessed across race, religion, geography and other lines that divide.” They aim to build on the work of King prior to his death and put an end to poverty nationwide.

The following words from King sum up best what Poor People’s Campaign stands for and the work they set out to do: “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out…This is the way I’m going.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPL Center) has been fighting on the frontlines for racial equality since its founding in 1971 by civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr. The Alabama-based organization has been a champion for the disenfranchised with lawsuits that have helped to protect the civil rights of minorities or defeat white supremacist groups.

With its Teaching Tolerance project, it provides schools and teachers nationwide with free materials to help reduce prejudice and improve “intergroup relations and supporting equitable school experiences for our nation’s children.”

To help the SPL Center continue to make a difference, you can make a donation.

The LGBTQ New York City based organization builds “leadership, political consciousness, and organizing skills of LGBTQ youth,” according to its mission. Led by young people of color, the Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment (FIERCE) is a grassroots organization that was founded in 2000. It encourages LGBTQ youth to “realize and manifest our own social and political power to change our conditions, to shape our futures, and to become effective agents of change in our communities.”

To help FIERCE make a difference, you can make a donation.

SisterLove, Inc. was founded in July 1989 by a group of women volunteers in Atlanta, Georgia. The reproductive justice nonprofit’s mission is to help educate black women on safe sex methods, AIDS prevention, and other reproductive health issues in the United States and beyond.

The organization provides free HIV testing, chlamydia and gonorrhea screenings, and counseling. Additionally, SisterLove works with girls ages 13-24 to bring awareness “to the policies that affect youth living with HIV and youth that are at high risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).”

Volunteer, or make a donation.

The Brooklyn-based civil and human rights organization focuses on elevating the voices of black women. It provides support in the forms of workshops and counseling for black women affected by sexual violence, abuse, incarceration, and other forms of gender violence. For anyone in the New York City area, Black Women’s Blueprint is actively seeking volunteers, and there’s also an option to make a donation.

According to the organization’s mission, it works “to place Black women and girls’ lives as well as their particular struggles squarely within the context of the larger racial justice concerns of Black communities and are committed to building movements where gender matters in broader social justice organizing so that all members of our communities gain social, political and economic equity.”

VICE Impact is committed to getting more people registered leading up to the 2018 midterm elections. We are working with Democracy Works' TurboVote challenge, a leading digital voter registration initiative, and grassroots organizations across the country to increase voter registration and turnout in the United States.