racial justice

In May of 2020, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the City of Boston announced a re-granting program to support artists of color through a project called Radical Imagination for Racial Justice (RIRJ), utilizing a $1.2 million grant from the Surdna Foundation.

Kanoute’s experience, like those of Lolade Siyonbola (an African-American student at Yale who was reported for napping in a common room) and Kanewakeron and Skanahwati Gray (Native American brothers who were questioned by police during a college tour in Colorado), is part of a deeply troubling pattern of suspicious neighbors, classmates and passersby calling the police on people of color for going about their everyday lives.

Oumou Kanoute, a black sophomore at Smith College, was quizzed by a police officer and a college employee as she studied in a dorm dining hall, after another employee reported a suspicious person laying down in the cafeteria to police.

Anti-violence activists rallied in Franklin Park on Friday evening, demanding strategic action and increased accountability from the Boston Police Department, amid reports of racial disparities between homicide arrest rates for white and black victims. 

At-large City Councilor Ayanna Pressley faced off against 7th Congressional District Rep. Michael Capuano at a forum on racial justice issues last Friday. Hosted by Roxbury Community College and moderated by Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins, the debate was a chance for voters to distinguish between the two progressive candidates with similar platforms.