WHAT CAN WE DO NOW? HOW DO WE ACT?

We are continuing to learn about these issues and are listening to others, but here are some ideas for how designers, planners, and others who impact the built environment can take action now. This includes reflecting on how we as individuals, our workplaces, and our collective industries uphold and contribute to white supremacy and structural racism, listening to BIPOC who have been writing, speaking and working on these issues for generations, working to make changes in our workplaces and institutions that represent us professionally, and financially supporting organizations and existing efforts to redistribute resources where they are needed.

DONATE

We encourage everyone to set up a recurring donation to one or more of the organizations listed below so we continue to contribute to these efforts in a sustained way into the future. Ask your employer to match your donation and encourage them to donate as a business/organization!

READ/LEARN/LISTEN/WATCH

In addition to what is listed on our resources page, consider checking out the following sources (but also note that this is in no way comprehensive and we encourage further exploring on your own and as a workplace!):

Meet the Black Design Collective Reimagining How Cities Get Built by Nate Berg

Black Lives Matter is Not a Design Challenge by Schessa Garbutt

"Notes from a Black Woman in Architecture/Design" by BlackArc Design

"Architects, Designers and Planners: #BlackLivesMatter and You Must Speak Up!" by Michael Ford

"Opinion: In Education and Practice, Architecture Fails to Hear Black Voices" by Cory Henry

The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race by Adrienne Brown

"To Architects + Designers Leading the Industry" by Naïla Opiangah

Architecture in Black by Darell Wayne Fields

"Dear AIA: Please Acknowledge Us When We're Alive" by Felema Yemaneberhan

Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present by Dr. Mabel O. Wilson, Irene Cheng, + Charles L Davis
"The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

"The New Jim Code? Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination" lecture by Ruha Benjamin

Space, Place and Gendered Identities: Feminist History and the Spatial Turn by Kathryne Beebe + Angela Davis

"America’s Cities Were Designed to Oppress" by Bryan Lee Jr.

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

"Kept Out: For People of Color, Banks are Shutting the Door to Homeownership" by Aaron Glantz + Emmanuel Martinez

Highway Robbery: Transportation, Racism & New Routes to Equity by Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, + Angel O. Torres

13TH by Ava DuVernay

1619 Podcast by Nikole Hannah-Jones

‘Woe Is You,’ White People Say. What We Need Is a Remedy. by Jeremiah Bey Ellison

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis

Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age by Brian Jefferson

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

"Million Dollar Blocks" by Columbia's Center for Spatial Research

Uncivil Podcast by Chenjerai Kumanyika + Jack Hitt

Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America by Brett Story

Cornerstones: A History of North Minneapolis Documentary by Twin Cities PBS

Jim Crow of the North Documentary Series by Twin Cities PBS

Voices of Rondo: Oral Histories of Saint Paul’s Historic Black Community by Kate Cavett

ADVOCATE

DESIGN JUSTICE FOR BLACK LIVES: Contact professional design organizations, leading firms/offices, and organizers to hold them accountable to create policies and other actions for racial justice within our fields. Organized by Colloquate Design.

DESIGN AS PROTEST: DIRECTION ACTION IDEATION: "a Black-led organizing effort, in solidarity with the movement for Black Lives, to marshall creative design strategies to dismantle the privilege and powers structures that use architecture and design as a tool of oppression"

STOP DESIGNING PRISONS, JAILS, POLICE STATIONS, IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTERS, + OTHER TOOLS FOR SYSTEMIC RACISM and organize with Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR): to call on AIA's National Ethic's Council to review their 2012 decision to reject ADPSR's proposal to ban the design of execution chambers and spaces intended for solitary confinement/isolation. Learn about and support Designing Justice + Designing Spaces' efforts to address the root causes of mass incarceration through design.

CONTACT ARCHITECTURE SCHOOLS and hold them accountable to hire more Black faculty, create more pipelines for Black academics, fund their research, + provide more scholarships to BIPOC students. via Germane Barnes

CONTACT NCARB, AIA, ACSA, + OTHER ORGS/INSTITUTIONS to ask how they are acting to reduce barriers for Black workers, how they plan on financially supporting Black-led organizations/firms, how they plan on acknowledging the specific ways they have contributed and upheld racism historically and today, and other ways they are addressing the vast number of racial disparities we have in our industry. Then hold them accountable!

HOLD YOUR EMPLOYERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR RACIAL JUSTICE with this template published on Rachel Cargle's The Great Unlearn

HIRE/PROMOTE BIPOC DESIGN STUDIOS

GET INVOLVED WITH THE DESIGN JUSTICE NETWORK, read their publications, + learn about how they are working to dismantle oppressive power structures in design