2021 Holiday Wish List

By Felicia Davis Blakley, President & CEO of Chicago Foundation for Women

At this time of year, many are in the holiday spirit, reflecting on the year that will end soon and the one that will begin. Personally, I also like to think about the year and reflect on what the new year may bring.

I’ve begun this tradition of putting a holiday wish list together that reflects where we are today and what we hope to accomplish as individuals and as organizations. This past year has been filled with many unprecedented ups and downs. However, there were many hopeful and exciting moments I’d like to remember:

· The inauguration of the first woman Vice President of the United States

· A record-setting 144 women are serving in Congress, with 120 women in the House of Representatives and 24 in the Senate

· Approval and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and boosters

· CFW hosted its first-ever hybrid 36th Annual Luncheon bringing together over 800 guests both virtually and in-person to hear from the keynote speaker, Stacey Abrams

· CFW awarded $3.2 million in nearly 250 grants to organizations supporting women, girls, trans, and gender nonbinary individuals across the region — the highest investments in the Foundations’ history

· CFW launched SHEcovery™, an innovative, holistic, and equitable approach to addressing COVID-19’s impact on women and girls

With these hopeful moments in mind, this year, my holiday wish list focuses on a population near to my heart — one that has been severely impacted by the pandemic and often overlooked: Black girls. More often than not, the experiences of Black girls are ignored and not deemed worthy of addressing. We need to change that. I’ve previously written about the “Adultification of Black Girls.” Adultification means teachers, parents, and law enforcement are less protective and more punitive with certain kids. This can lead to placing Black girls along what is called a “trauma to prison” pipeline, a term coined by Taylar Nuevelle to describe what happens to women and girls who have untreated trauma and who end up entangled in the criminal justice system.

A Long Walk Home, an organization focused on Black girls and young women’s healing from sexual violence through art, published a report that shares first-hand experiences from some of their program participants across key areas: public health and mortality; economic loss; mental health; domestic and sexual violence; and education. The report is the first of its kind in the United States to examine how the two pandemics — COVID-19 and systemic racism — impacted the lives and livelihood of Black girls and their families. A Long Walk Home found the pandemic significantly increased the role of Black girls to be caregivers for older adults, family members who were sick with COVID-19, their younger siblings, and other children in their neighborhood, while they had the additional responsibility of being full-time students in virtual classrooms.

Moreover, their data revealed the vast majority of Black girls became even more vulnerable to multiple forms of violence — such as domestic violence, sexual assault, cyber-bullying, and police violence — with little hope of a safety net and few resources to ensure their success. Though Black girls continually remain on the frontlines of most successful social justice movements — ‘me too.’ and Black Lives Matter — they remain largely overlooked or invisible in key legislation and policies that address public and mental health, poverty, education, racism, and gender-based violence. This report reveals the severe costs and consequences for Black communities when Black girls remain under-resourced, overlooked, and vulnerable to multiple forms of violence and recognizes the ingenuity, creativity, and unparalleled leadership that Black girls have exhibited in these extraordinary times.

I’m reminded of the line in Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, “are we brave enough to be it?” Black girls are showing us what bravery looks like. Over the past year, I have been constantly in awe at the resiliency and tenacity of our communities, but especially of Black girls.

My holiday wish list this year is to keep Black girls safe, support them, listen to them, and invest in them. A Long Walk Home’s “Black Girls During the Pandemic and Protest” report shares some recommendations I’d ask each of us as individuals and organizations to consider, support, and implement:

1. Guarantee Equal Access to Health Care and Counseling

2. Invest in Black Girls

3. End Violence Against Black Girls and Young Women

4. Provide Equal Access to Quality Education and Technology

5. Support the Creative and Political Vision of Black Girls

CFW is committed to investing and supporting Black girls and Black girls serving organizations. Our SHEcovery™ initiative addresses crucial issue areas that impact the lives of women, girls, trans, and gender nonbinary individuals in an equitable and holistic manner. The pandemic continues to exacerbate the systemic inequities in our communities. We cannot go back to business as usual; the time is NOW to get women back to work in ways that work for women, address the eviction crisis, care for our caregivers, and demand an anti-racist healthcare system.

As a global community, our lives have been upended by the pandemic for nearly two years. It can be easy to become desensitized to so many things. As we collectively reflect on what this pandemic and this year have taught us, I encourage you not to look away but lean into the stories of these girls and countless others. Writer and activist Audre Lorde famously said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own…Nor is anyone of you.” And bell hooks, who recently became an ancestor, said, “[H]ope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.”

Please take this opportunity to learn, connect, and empathize with our most vulnerable sisters, for it’s through empathy that we begin to truly understand the impact and feel we can be part of solutions for a better tomorrow, for all of us.

A version of this article was originally published as part of Chicago Foundation for Women’s “GoWomen” Monthly Newsletter which you can read here.