Letters for Black Lives is a set of crowdsourced, multilingual and culturally-aware resources aimed at creating a space for open and honest conversations about racial justice, police violence, and anti-Blackness in our families and communities. The project started out as an intergenerational note from Asian American children to their parents, voicing concerns and support for the Black community.
The goal was to create a starting point for difficult conversations. "Talking about race and police violence in Asian communities has always been difficult," said Christina Xu, one of the letter's lead organizers. "There are language and cultural barriers, media access issues and unresolved distrust between communities."
The letter first appeared as a Google Doc last Thursday, July 7 and has attracted contributions from hundreds of people around the world, ballooning into an international, multilingual project spanning translations in over thirty languages and dialects, as well as additional versions spoken from the perspectives of other communities who share similar concerns (Latinx, Canadians, African Immigrants, among others).
Many more are now building on the project with their own voices through audio, video and images.
Want to help? Phase One of the project was to get the translations done. It's an ongoing process.
Phase Two is The Readings Project, to create audio and video recordings of the letter. The goal is to get as many recordings of the letter in all of the translated languages by Monday, July 18. These recordings are important because even with translations, a lot of folks don't read or have easy access to read the letter. And with recordings, in-language radio and television stations could actually air translated, readily available media.
To learn more about how you can get involved in The Readings Project, refer to the Google Doc. For further information about the project, including the original letter, all of the available translations, related resources and other ways you can get involved, visit Letters for Black Lives.