The Black Innovation Alliance
I wanted to share more about a new group I discovered called the Black Innovation Alliance.
Here’s their manifesto –
It Has To Come From Us.
Black people have power. Our talent and ideas have value. We envision a world where Black prosperity is as abundant as Black genius.
Black prosperity is money in our pockets, assets in our accounts, and land in our names. Black prosperity fuels communities brimming with joy, resilience, opportunity, and peace. It is a state of being, in which Black people experience health in mind, body, and spirit and have the emotional space to build strong and loving bonds. Black prosperity empowers us to use our gifts to rise to the highest heights and live life to its fullest. In Black prosperity, we seek a freedom that has eluded us for 400 years.
Our People
We claim the right for Black people to profit fully from our contributions to this age of innovation. We are the Black Innovation Alliance (BIA), an entity comprising support organizations that serve three types of Black innovators:
- Founders of high-growth tech companies;
- Entrepreneurs leading small and medium-sized businesses focused on long-term and sustainable growth;
- Creative technologists and artists who use emerging technologies as their mediums.
The Alliance believes that there is great power in our unity. And we will leverage that power by using capital, education, public policy, research, and media as our cudgels and our change agents. These cultural building blocks are essential for designing our shared future, building it, and then bringing it to the masses.
All five ensure that Black people may participate in the innovation economy as builders, owners, and creators, not just as source material, workers, and consumers. We reject the mining of our people for labor and ideas. Instead, we seek equitable offers that will create wealth for us all.
Our Pledge
In the next 10 years, the Black Innovation Alliance will recruit at least 500 organizations to support, fund, and sustain one million Black innovators.
Our organizations pledge:
- To improve Black prosperity by increasing Black participation in the innovation economy.
- To use capital, education, public policy, research, and media as levers for change.
- To prioritize people over profits, and individuals over corporations.
- To reject policies, programs, products, and deals that commodify Black culture, creativity, skills, and data, without providing fair mechanisms for Black people to gain equity or receive competitive compensation.
- To create innovative and disruptive social justice solutions within the realm of business.
- To prioritize working with Black-run organizations that already have deep and authentic relationships with Black entrepreneurs and creators.
- To form a distributed network that shares mutual values, long-term priorities, real-world initiatives, and resources.
Our Power
Our power is us.
Grow with us.
Protest with us.
Build with us.
Invest in us.
Join us.
Check them out and let me know if you have more details on the group.