Black Lives Matter.

Forerunner stands in solidarity with the Black community in calling for the eradication of structural racism. The tragic killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and innumerable others are endemic of unjust and discriminatory systems that have long inflicted violence and harm on Black and Indigenous communities.

Our mission is to help communities adapt to climate change. This mission is deeply rooted in the belief that safety and equality is a fundamental human right. Climate change and racial justice are inextricably linked – it is imperative that our work addresses this networked reality. We believe deeply that this is best done by amplifying the voices, needs, and representation of historically marginalized communities.

We’ve spent the last few weeks grappling with how our organization can help. As we continue to engage in the urgent work of allyship as individuals, we also pledge to take the following actions as a company:

1. We will prioritize building software features that highlight inequalities. The distributive impacts of climate change have been, and will continue to be, disproportionately borne by communities of color. Our datasets and software applications are used by partner communities to make adaptation decisions and to plan for future risk conditions. Because of this, we are committed to integrating datasets and analysis that shed light on racial disparities. We have reprioritized our roadmap to reach this goal and will check in with a separate blog post as this work is released.
2. We will work to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities. We invest a lot of time and energy into our blog and newsletter. They are our primary channels of ongoing engagement with our customers and peers. Going forward we will seek to create significantly more content that forefronts the leadership and contributions of Black, Indigenous, and underrepresented leaders. This content will include work done by individuals and organizations to advocate for vulnerable communities.
3. We will change our words. We believe in the narrative power of words. All too often we have used terms without acknowledging their relationship to structural inequality. We will strive to be more deliberate and transparent in identifying the identities and biases of our written content, in our marketing materials, and in our event presentations.
4. We will support organizations that create opportunities and access for underrepresented communities. We believe that access to economic opportunity is not uniform in the U.S. To contribute to the prosperity of communities of color, we have made donations as a company to Pursuit and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

‍

All Black lives matter and no one is exempt from the struggle for Black rights. We are committed to continuing to unearth and dismantle racist thoughts, actions, and policies as we work towards a future of true justice. As we make progress on this journey, we’ll be posting updates on our blog.