Honoring Black History Month: In the Face of State Violence, We Need Community Power
Black History Month arrives this year as communities of color and immigrant communities face escalating state violence. Some of it is visible — immigration raids, unlawful detentions, retaliation against dissent. Some of it operates through policy — poverty deepened by disinvestment, neighborhoods denied resources, decisions that strip communities of voice and opportunity.
Violence takes many forms.
It can be ICE agents at your door. It can be schools that never receive adequate funding. It can be housing costs that rise while wages stagnate. It can be systems that deny communities influence over the conditions shaping their lives.
Black History Month calls us to examine this moment with clarity. The Black leaders and movements we honor understood that when communities are denied opportunity and self-determination, the central question becomes power — who holds it, how it is used, and how communities can build it for themselves.
To understand this moment, we have to understand self-determination.
When Agency Is Taken Away
My family immigrated to the United States from Peru during a period of political violence, hyperinflation, and economic collapse. Democratic institutions were weakening. In the name of restoring order, the government consolidated authority, imposed harsh austerity, and used repression to silence opposition.
People worked hard to adapt, yet opportunity continued to narrow.
What eroded first was agency — the belief that effort could shape what came next. When communities lose the ability to influence their futures, instability spreads. Trust declines. Harm becomes normalized, whether through force or through systems that limit access to opportunity.
For my family, immigration meant reclaiming the ability to build and restoring our own self-determination.
Self-determination decides whether communities endure or fracture. When people can shape their circumstances, stability and opportunity grow. When that capacity is restricted, harm follows.
Those same dynamics are shaping the United States today.
The System We Are Facing
ICE enforcement is one visible expression of state violence. It does not operate in isolation. It exists within a broader system shaped by disinvestment, redlining, environmental injustice, financial exclusion, and policies that restrict access to opportunity and political voice.
The murders of Alex Pretti and Renée Good — two white protestors killed by ICE agents — forced national attention onto that system. The public shock that followed revealed an assumption that state violence has limits, and that some people are insulated from it.
For immigrant communities and communities of color, that assumption has never reflected reality.
The fact that the agent involved in Pretti’s killing was a person of color underscores something essential: white supremacy functions as a system of concentrated power. It rewards and reinforces the defense of that concentration, regardless of who carries it out.
Enforcement and structural exclusion reinforce one another. Poverty, redlining, and disinvestment create vulnerability; enforcement then punishes and suppresses communities when they attempt to resist or organize. When communities build power – when they organize, demand accountability, and shape institutions that serve them – those who benefit from concentrated power will respond, and even kill, to maintain their position. Sometimes with policies, and sometimes with bullets.
These dynamics did not begin with this administration, and they will not end with it.
The logic shaping today’s attacks on immigrant communities echoes the logic that shaped genocide against Indigenous peoples, enslavement, segregation, redlining, exclusionary immigration laws, and modern policing. That logic has always depended on control.
And, control is enforced through policy and force.
Immigrant communities today navigate systems structured by racial hierarchies that were also imposed on Black communities. When public attention fades, those structures remain.
Black Freedom Struggles Built Power
Black history tells the story of communities that built power under conditions of terror and exclusion.
Black communities created community-led institutions when existing ones refused to serve them. They organized across generations and built solidarity across racial lines. They cultivated leadership rooted in accountability and mutual care. They built durable networks capable of surviving backlash.
Civil rights victories emerged from sustained organizing and collective strategy. Many protections that benefit the entire country exist because Black communities forced institutions to change. Multiracial coalitions strengthened and expanded those gains.
Black history highlights that power can be built deliberately, collectively, and across generations. These lessons remain urgent today.
What Community Power Means
Community power is the capacity of communities to shape the systems they live under.
And that power grows when people gain access to capital, ownership, and decision-making authority. It strengthens when institutions reflect lived experience and remain accountable to the communities they serve. It deepens through coalitions and long-term relationships. It endures when built for the long haul rather than mobilized only in moments of crisis.
Concentrated power relies on fear and exclusion. Community power grows through agency, trust, and infrastructure.
Community power interrupts cycles of instability by expanding voice, ownership, and accountability. It allows members of a community to create opportunities for themselves and for future generations. It reduces the likelihood that any administration can destabilize communities without resistance.
If we want to fight back against the injustice of this moment, we must invest in building that capacity and harnessing that power.
The Work of Community Power-Building
Greenlining stands in a lineage of intergenerational community power-building.
Our mission is to create a world where communities of color — including immigrant communities — can thrive. Thriving requires access to capital, ownership, political influence, institutions that answer to communities, and shared accountability within communities themselves.
Structural barriers and gatekeeping limit those pathways. Disinvestment and exclusion weaken communities’ ability to exercise power. Our work focuses on dismantling those barriers and strengthening grassroots organizations that build community power on the ground.
Power-building requires long-term commitment. It depends on race-conscious, place-based, culturally rooted work that strengthens trust and shared leadership. It requires building institutions that endure beyond election cycles.
Carrying Black History Forward
Black History Month affirms our intergenerational responsibility to build power in our communities, especially in the face of deepening injustice. Movements for racial equity today inherit foundations built through historical struggle, strategy, and collective care. Our task is to continue building forward. Community power sustains safety, opportunity, and possibility. It allows communities to govern their own futures.
Community power is how we create the future our communities deserve — one where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
