Over the last two years, the pandemic exposed the intersections of multiple structures of inequality including race, ethnicity, gender, immigration status, and class, which have a multiplying, devastating effect when they cross paths for the same individual. Immigrant women of color, their families, and communities have experienced criminalization in this country in similar yet different ways.

In this episode of “Funding the Yes” we hear from Guerline Jozef, president of Haitian Bridge Alliance and a Black migrant from Haiti who talks about experiencing anti-Blackness through the lens of migration. We also hear from Lian Cheun, executive director of Khmer Girls in Action, and a Cambodian migrant who grew up in East Oakland experiencing the aftermath and trauma resulting from the refugee crisis in Southeast Asia; and from Sandy Valenciano, campaign and organizing director at Urban Peace Movement, who is an undocumented Latinx woman who grew up in a family that experienced criminalization and the impacts of anti-Blackness. These experiences exhibit how criminalization is not a binary issue and is as complex as the people it impacts, overlapping with immigration status, race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

This episode also turns to philanthropic funders and their role in embracing trust-based philanthropy through an intersectional and a people, not issue-focused, lens. We hear from funders Angie Junck, Human Rights program director at the Heising-Simons Foundation, and Sandy Chiang, senior program manager at the California Endowment, to better understand why they choose to support this intersectional work, the challenges they face –– including funding models that force issues into siloes based on problems as opposed to people –– and what funders can do better.

Listen to the Episode

“Funding the Yes” is a three-part podcast series organized by the California Criminal Justice Funders Group (CCJFG). Funding the Yes asks the question: What does “funding the yes” look like within intersectional aspects of social and racial justice movements? Through conversations amongst funders and movement partners, we focus on strategies to fund building a more just future for our communities and ending systems of injustice. You can listen to Episode 1 on Healing Justice on CCJFG’s YouTube Channel or Spotify.