Ultraviolet is fighting for a more just and equitable world for Black and brown women

As we mark one year of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the middle of Women’s History Month, we must acknowledge that Black and brown women have been on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, bearing the greatest burden of this pandemic. We must also acknowledge that women are still being left behind and left out.

As Brittany Packnett Cunningham says, “A global crisis does not erase inequality. It expands it. As we live through this pandemic, we have a responsibility to expose and solve for injustice.” 

Mothers of color have borne the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, with staggeringly low wages compounding the problem. While the recently signed American Rescue Plan includes hugely important victories and much needed help, from important funding for child care, to cutting child poverty in half, it is just a rescue plan – we still need to recover and build back in a way that centers the millions of women who are told that they are essential, but paid poverty wages.

As we work towards recovery, we must build an economy that works for us all. That’s why UltraViolet is working to pass a $15 minimum wage that would be transformative for women, lifting pay for 32 million workers, nearly a quarter of whom are Black and Latina mothers. As a result, they will be able to afford safer housing, nutritious food, medicine, and other essentials.And we need more permanent changes, that’s why we’re fighting for permanent increases to paid family leave, funding for child care, and to stop the attacks on our reproductive care. We must also fight white supremacy and misogyny and all the ways that together they have fueled hatred and violence. The far right, empowered by Trump, has been using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube to spread sexist and racist disinformation — or put simply, lies — about the Coronavirus and directly threatening Asian-American women.

Over the past year, we have seen a surge of violence against members of the Asian American community, and just last week, a misogynist white supremacist killed eight people, six of them Asian women. The amplification of racist lies targeting the Asian American community via social media and Donald Trump’s bully pulpit, combined with misogynist and exploitative views of women as well as the easy access to firearms in the U.S., directly contributed to this act of violence. 

We need more support to continue our work to: 

• Advocate for an economy that truly centers Black and Indigenous women, as well as women of color
• Fight the attacks on our reproductive freedom;
• Fight the online misogyny that fueled the attacks on the Capitol on January 6;
• Hold the media accountable for its treatment of women and people of color;
• Hold corporations that fund anti-women, anti-justice politicians accountable
• Stand up to Republican-led attacks on women and vulnerable communities–especially women of color, LGBTQ communities, and Indigenous women;
• And much more.

Please join our effort to drive feminist cultural and political change and expose the white supremacist patriarchy to create the conditions for a more just and equitable world by voting for us.