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Moving $200,000 in Solidarity with Immigrant-Led and Trans-Led Organizing
“Headwaters will continue to support organizing to assert the rights, dignity, and humanity of all immigrants and trans people throughout Minnesota in all political conditions.”
Since February, Headwaters has made eight rapid response grants of $25,000 for a total of $200,000 to support Minnesota organizations working to defend, protect, and advocate for immigrant communities and transgender people across Minnesota.
Immigrants and trans people are our friends, neighbors, and valued community members. An attack on immigrant and trans people threatens our collective safety and well-being. When we fight for our immigrant and trans friends and neighbors, we are standing up to protect our communities.
As the Trump administration attempts to threaten, divide, and isolate us, we look to the leadership of BIPOC- and trans-led organizations who have been leading the fight against racist, transphobic, and white supremacist policies for years. Now is a critical time to resource and join forces with organizers who know how to build power in spite of political repression.
Organizing for Immigrant and Trans Communities Across Minnesota
President Trump’s executive orders, alongside his years-long attacks on immigrants and refugees, have heightened the risk for state and individual violence against immigrant communities. We are seeing an already flawed immigration system tear apart families and silence dissent while abandoning even the pretense of fair and legal due process.
In response to this escalated attack on immigrant rights, immigrant-led organizations throughout Minnesota are mobilizing to protect our communities. Four immigrant-defense rapid-response grantees are leading culturally specific organizing to safe-guard their community members’ rights, fight state terror and separation, and advocate for policies that protect their communities.
Trump’s executive orders have also attacked transgender people’s access to gender affirming care, legal recognition, and participation in public life. The increased precarity of federal trans rights and mounting state-backed anti-trans rhetoric have intensified a growing crisis for trans people – especially trans people of color, undocumented trans people, and trans people who rely on state assistance.
As attempts to erase trans people have multiplied, trans organizers are stepping up to defend trans people across the region. Four trans-defense rapid response grantees are working to provide space and support for trans people and their families to organize, build community, and advocate for needed resources.
Rejecting Scapegoating, Resourcing Solidarity
At Headwaters, we are clear that creating scapegoats of marginalized groups is a well-worn authoritarian tool intended to dehumanize, divide, and distract. While trans and immigrant communities face distinct threats, both sets of attacks seek to limit entire communities’ freedom of movement, ability to participate freely in public life, and constrict the public’s imagination of who deserves dignity, respect, and belonging.
Likewise, we know that trans and immigrant communities are not mutually exclusive. In fact, undocumented trans people and gender nonconforming immigrants are among the most at risk for state violence in this moment.
So, let us be unequivocal: Headwaters will continue to support organizing to assert the rights, dignity, and humanity of all immigrants and trans people throughout Minnesota in all political conditions.
$200,000 to Protect, Defend, and Build Power
All eight rapid response grantees will receive unrestricted grants of $25,000 to support their critical work in this moment. The rapid response grantees are:
While Headwaters typically names all grantees when announcing grants, three immigrant-defense organizations receiving grants have asked to remain unnamed due to security concerns.
We reject the dehumanizing racist, xenophobic, and transphobic policies and rhetoric of the Trump administration that seek to sow division, fear, and hatred within our communities. Instead, we remain committed to resourcing grassroots organizations that are fighting the systems of oppression that endanger all of us: white supremacy, colonialism, xenophobia, sexism, nationalism, and unfettered racial capitalism.
We call our community to join us in supporting the work being done by immigrant and trans communities across Minnesota in this moment of increased threat and fear. Support the organizations named above, show up for your neighbors, and reject the rhetoric that aims to divide and diminish our collective power.
Join us in supporting grassroots movements across Minnesota – today and every day.
In solidarity,
Headwaters Foundation for Justice