Milwaukee Based African American Roundtable Awarded $500,000 Grant – Milwaukee Courier Weekly Newspaper

By Karen Stokes

Markasa Tucker-Harris, Govt Director African American Roundtable (Photograph/African American Roundtable)

Milwaukee primarily based African American Roundtable was awarded the $500,000 True Reformer Institutional Grant from Public Welfare Basis (PWF).

Seven True Reformer grants have been awarded to organizations nationally which can be advancing restorative, community-led, and racially simply approaches to justice to honor the Basis’s seventy fifth anniversary.

The Public Welfare Basis has supported efforts to advance justice and alternative for individuals in want. In its 75-year historical past, the Basis has remodeled 5,700 grants totaling greater than $700 million.

Institutional grants are one-time infusions of capital meant to strengthen a company’s working and programmatic infrastructure in order that it may possibly proceed its work properly into the longer term.

The African American Roundtable (AART) is a coalition led by and serving Black individuals in Milwaukee.

“We arrange the neighborhood round points to assist help a thriving life and a thriving neighborhood to reside in. We construct and develop leaders to do the work that organizers achieve this we develop people to exit as neighborhood advocates for issues that they should thrive right here within the metropolis of Milwaukee,” mentioned Govt Director, Markasa Tucker- Harris.

The group was based in 2011 after some Black organizers and nonprofit leaders needed to have a company the place monies have been funded via a Black group to help Black leaders and their work and the problems they have been engaged on.

Candice C. Jones, President and CEO, Public Welfare Basis
(Photograph/Public Welfare Basis)

In 2017, Markasa Tucker-Harris grew to become the director. At the moment the group was engaged on police reform. In 2019, the group moved from police reform work to making a marketing campaign known as LiberateMKE.

“We’re asking for a $25 million divestment from the police and to take a position that cash into the neighborhood,” mentioned Tucker-Harris. “We organized round it and other people started to come back out and present up at metropolis funds hearings demanding that they needed cash to go to different locations and never so closely into policing.”

Different True Reformer grantees embrace:

Colorado Felony Justice Reform Coalition: Denver, Colo. Michigan Middle for Youth Justice: Ann Arbor, Mich., Operation Restoration: New Orleans, La., Individuals’s Advocacy Institute: Jackson, Miss, Voices for a Second Probability: Washington, D.C. Ladies on The Rise: Atlanta, Ga.

“The African American Roundtable is paving the best way for a brand new, transformative method to justice in Milwaukee that’s community-led, restorative, and racially simply. They deserve not simply our reward, however our funding to make sure that they will proceed to advance this work within the years to come back,” mentioned Public Welfare Basis President and CEO Candice C. Jones.