Grantee Spotlight: Black Alliance for Just Immigration
Organization: Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)
Recent Grants: $10,000 Immigrant Rights Fund Immediate Response Grant (2017); $30,000 Invest in Youth Grant (2016)
Website: http://blackalliance.org/
Year Founded: 2006
Communities Served:
BAJI, a national racial justice and migrant rights organization, has its New York City headquarters on Nostrand Avenue in the heart of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. From there, it develops creative local campaigns grounded in a commitment to Black family and community in partnership with a highly skilled collective of veteran organizers, cultural workers, and technology savvy Black immigrants and African-Americans.
Our grants support:
BAJI addresses challenges facing Black immigrant communities, created by the interconnection of racism, criminalization, and economic disenfranchisement.
Our Invest in Youth funding supports leadership development and empowerment of our borough's Black immigrant youth and families. BAJI’s member-led campaigns include: Safety Beyond Policing, ICE-FREE NYC, ICE Out of Rikers, Know Your Rights trainings, and a new effort called the #FreedomCities movement in collaboration with the Ella Baker Center, Enlace, and the New York Worker Center Federation.
Through our Immigrant Rights Fund, we’re supporting BAJI’s comprehensive outreach to Black Muslim immigrants. Following the announcement of the Trump Administration’s January executive order banning travelers from select Muslim-majority countries, BAJI provided emergency support for its members, especially Somali and Sudanese immigrants. Their immediate response work has focused on alleviating fear, providing language access, and offering legal information.
Why we’re supporting them:
Black immigrants make up only 7% of the immigrant population in the U.S., but make up 20% of immigrants facing deportation on criminal grounds. BAJI was formed to bring Black intergenerational voices together to advocate for equality and justice through community and faith-based advocacy, research, and political education. BAJI is led by Executive Director Opal Tometti, a founding member of the Black Lives Matter movement.