Black Futures Lab (BFL) is a voter mobilization and advocacy group targeting African-American voters run by Black Lives Matter leader Alicia Garza. BFL is a project of the San Francisco Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), a left-of-center to radical-left advocate for low-income Asian Americans. Black to the Future Action Fund is BFL’s political advocacy sister-group.
BFL is run by Alicia Garza, a life-long radical-left activist who describes herself as a “trained Marxist.” 1 While attending the University of California San Diego, Garza helped organize the first Women of Color Conference across the University of California system. 2 After graduating, Garza worked as executive director of the left-of-center advocacy group People Organized to Win Employment Rights for almost nine years. 3
Black Futures Lab organizes much of its activity under the Black Imagination Incubator program, which conducts research on the effects of public policy on African Americans. 4
Black Census Project
Shortly after its founding, BFL launched the Black Census Project, a project which claims to be the largest opinion survey of African Americans ever conducted. 5
The 2019 survey questioned almost 30,000 people, largely using tools through technology company Socioanalytica. The survey sample’s reported gender demographic make-up is radically different from that of the American and African-American population more generally, indicating the possibility of sampling bias. Of the participants in the Black Census Project, 1.5% identified as transgender,6 compared to 0.42% of people in the U.S. population7 and 0.8% of the African-American population in other studies. 8 An additional 4% of respondents identified as gender non-binary, while only 33% of respondents identified as cisgender men. 6
The Project found that the African Americans surveyed overwhelmingly support left-wing policy initiatives, including a $15 minimum wage, government-subsidized low-income housing, government-funded healthcare, a guaranteed jobs program, and reparations for slavery paid by the federal government to African Americans. 6
BFL partnered with several left-of-center organizations to complete the Black Census Project, including:6
The Black to the Future Public Policy Institute is a joint project of BFL and the Black to the Future Action Fund. The Institute creates and advocates for policy recommendations based on the results of the Black Census Project. As of late 2020, few proposals were listed, with the Institute focusing on combatting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on African Americans. 9
Shirley Chisholm “Unbought and Unbossed” Black Politics Project
The Shirley Chisholm “Unbought and Unbossed” Black Politics Project is BFL’s political training program. Named after Shirley Chisholm, a former Democratic U.S. Representative from New York and the first African-American woman to run for president,4 the program has four divisions which train African-American voter coalitions, campaign managers, candidates, and campaign fundraisers to support left-of-center causes. 4
Partner Organizations
Black Futures Lab lists three left-of-center organizations as its partners. Color of Change is an advocacy group founded to publicize former President George W. Bush’s alleged neglect of African-American communities after Hurricane Katrina. Demos is a left-wing public policy advocacy group associated with the Democratic Party and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The Tides Foundation is a major pass-through fund for left-of-center donors. 10
To increase the civic engagement of low-income Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by expanding statewide community organizing and advocacy infrastructure in California, through an entity such as AAPIs for Civic Empowerment Education Fund.
To increase the civic engagement of low-income Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by expanding statewide community organizing and policy advocacy infrastructure in California, through an entity such as the AAPIs for Civic Empowerment Education Fund.
The Black Futures Lab is working to make Black communities powerful by educating Black communities, developing leaders, and building the capacity of Black-led grassroots organizations.
To address the escalation of anti-Asian violence by ensuring Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in California have the narrative change and organizing capacity to build solidarity and advance a shared vision of health, belonging, inclusion and racial equity.
To address the escalation of anti-Asian violence by ensuring Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in California have the narrative change and organizing capacity to build solidarity and advance a shared vision of health, belonging, inclusion and racial equity.
To strengthen the leadership and capacity of the chinese immigrant community to build community and worker power with other low-income communities of color through organizing, integrated voter engagement and movement building strategies. To protect and preserve affordable housing in district 11 for low wage earners, immigrants, and communities of color through a three-pronged approach that consists of advocacy and organizing; tenant counseling and affordable housing application assistance; and attorney assistance. To increase capacity to promote workers rights, particularly workers of color, through participation in the bay area worker rights cohort, which aims to increase connection and relationship with other worker centers in the region. To administer and coordinate sf undocufund, a vehicle by which key worker rights groups can come together to respond to the covid-19 crisis collectively. To develop a community organizing strategy targeting chinese american voters in bay area commun
To improve the capacity of grassroots organizations in California to integrate civic engagement components into their non-lobbying advocacy and community organizing programs to advance health-promoting public policies.
Core support for the Black Futures Lab’s work to transform Black communities into constituencies that change the way power operates—locally, statewide, and nationally
