By Cleo Rohn, RFC Granting Coordinator

After awarding over $220,000 in fall grants, we ready ourselves for what comes next.

On the evening of November 5th, I sat upright in front of my computer, clutching a mug of tea in both hands and staring at the screen. A week later, I found myself in an identical position, but under notably different circumstances. On the first evening, I was watching election results roll in and feeling the growing pit of dread in my stomach. On the second evening, I was on Zoom, preparing to join an RFC granting meeting. For the first time since the threat of a second Trump era was confirmed, I was meeting with the Board of Directors to discuss and award grants to a new round of targeted activist parents and youth. I was filled with worries about what the landscape of progressive activism will look like over the next four years, and about the safety of families within the RFC community.

In the shadow of the election, the RFC awarded over $220,000 in fall grants to targeted activist families, exceeding our planned budget to provide as much critical support as possible. Our 90 fall grants include nine brand new RFC families from across the country. Parents in these families are ex-political prisoners, racial justice organizers, peace activists taking a stand against genocide, survivors of police violence, authors facing book bans for uplifting queer youth, and more. All of these families will have long roads ahead of them for the next few years, and it’s on us to do everything we can to support them in the fight.

When I look back on a new season of granting, it’s always with mixed emotions. On one hand, it’s an absolute joy to get to know a new batch of amazing activist families and an honor to advocate for them to receive funding. On the other hand, every new story is jarring, and hearing the traumas activists are enduring at this very moment in our country brings waves of shock and pain every time. This is the constant dilemma of the RFC: feeling honored to do the work we do, and simultaneously wishing our organization didn’t need to exist at all. This fall, all of these feelings were magnified.

The day after our last granting meeting, while notifying families that they had received grants, I received a message from an activist whose grandson (who she helps to raise) we have supported for years. She wrote:

“Dear Cleo, Thank you so very much! On behalf of my family, please know you have helped us out tremendously. Know that I have no intention of allowing this new regime to in any way silence me nor impact my work, except to further increase my determination to stand up. I continue to also work hard to ensure [my grandson] will be able to be strong in our fight as he enters adulthood.”

A few days later, I was sent a video of one of our beneficiaries onstage at a large event, speaking passionately and persuasively on behalf of transgender youth across the country. And a few days after that, I received news that another young adult beneficiary was making enormous strides in his development and education thanks to years of RFC-funded tutoring.

All this is to say that the hardships persist, but so do the joy and resilience. It’s easy to focus on one and not the other, to get bogged down in dread and forget the small revolutions happening around us all the time. The RFC serves as a continual reminder for me that both exist in tandem. Activist families in our community have no plans to give up, and so we mustn’t either. Going into this holiday season and the unknown years beyond, I hope we remember how much power we hold to uplift and nourish one another. RFC families show us that the power to create a better world is within us, especially when we come together in community. We will keep showing up. I hope you will too.