June 05, 2020

A Letter From Our Founders - What Do We Do? We Stand Together.

Friends,

We’ve all watched in pain as recent tragic events have unfolded — the horrific deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and too many others that serve as an unbearable reminder of the systemic racism still at work in many parts of our society.

We’ve also been so inspired by the passionate and fearless collaboration of individuals, organizations, and thought leaders who are peacefully protesting in Minnesota and around the world. They know what we know. That this is not a political issue, but a human rights issue. People of all ages and backgrounds have joined together to drive deeper awareness, to say this is not okay, and to demand justice.

Black Lives Matter. We stand with the black community. The system must change and we promise here and now to continue to be a part of that change.

Right now we commit to:

  • Donating a percentage of our sales for the month of June to the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund -- https://www.naacpldf.org and the ACLU Foundation of Colorado -- https://aclu-co.org/
  • Working with current philanthropic partners like PARSA, World Vision, and Mercy in Action to find new ways to engage in the fight for equality and opportunity
  • Using our position as a leading values-driven business in the natural skin and body care industry to make our sector more equitable
  • Increasing our purchases from minority‑owned businesses
  • Finding new ways to use our corporate platform to chip away at systemic injustice
  • Using our social media platform and our tireless voices to stand for justice and change
  • Redoubling our efforts to be that change at home, as individuals, as a small business, and as a family
  • Creating space for difficult conversations

From the beginning, Green Goo has been a company that helps people and we have always sought out ways to use our business to make the world a better place. We’re starting in our own backyard. We’re a family, so we’re having hard conversations, with our children, with our employees, with each other. This week, we've been listening a lot too - to the grieving, to the youth of America, to our leaders, to our employees, and to our customers.

Thank you for being an inspiration to us and for your continued input and support. Thank you for all the things you do, big and small, to be a part of positive change in the world. And thank you for helping Green Goo become a little better every day.

Jodi, Jennifer, and Kathy Scott
Founders of Sierra Sage Herbs
Makers of Green Goo and Good Goo

Scott Family

We’ve gathered some resources with places you can volunteer or organizations you can donate to. Please find those links below. The world needs you. Let’s make a change, together.

Where to volunteer and donate:
So many of the organizations that are dedicated to helping save and advocate for black lives are in desperate need of additional funds, as are the families directly involved. Many protestors are being held on bail, so donating to a bail fund helps combat mass incarceration as well as racial and economic disparities. Please consider donating to the following, if you are able:

ACLU
Donate Here
From their site: The ACLU dares to create a more perfect union — beyond one person, party, or side. Our mission is to realize this promise of the United States Constitution for all and expand the reach of its guarantees.

Association for Black Economic Power
Donate Here
From their site: Create prevention and intervention models to address wealth extraction through systems change and the development of products and services that provide generational wealth building opportunities and access to capital while providing an alternative to traditional predatory, culturally incompetent and inequitable practices.

The Bail Project
Donate Here
From their site: The Bail Project National Revolving Bail Fund is on a mission to combat mass incarceration and reshape the pretrial system in the United States. 100% of online donations are used to bring people home. Since bail money comes back to us when cases close, we’re able to recycle every dollar donated at least twice per year.

Black Lives Matter
Donate Here
From their site: #BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for black imagination and innovation, and centering black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.

BlackOUT Collective
Donate Here
From their site: BlackOUT Collective is a radical full-service, direct- action organization. We build organizations’ capacity to execute creative and effective direct actions in service of their organizing and advocacy work. We do this through providing personalized direct action trainings and on the ground action support. We see ourselves as a “Liberation Lab”- a container for experimentation, deep space visioning and learning. We work to train our community members to become leaders in the fight for racial justice. We aim to give individuals the skills, expertise, and confidence – not to mention action strategies – needed to end anti-blackness.

Black Table Arts
Donate Here
From their site: Gathering Black communities through the arts, towards better black futures. Black Table Arts gives access to quality, art based programs that center education, social justice and artistic development to uplift black lives. Our mission is to raise volume in black life through the arts and organize toward livable futures.

Black Visions Collective
Donate Here
From their site: Black Visions Collective envisions a world in which all black lives matter. We use the guidance and brilliance of our ancestors as well as the teachings of our own experiences to pursue our commitment to dismantling systems of oppression and violence. We are determined in our pursuit of dignity and equity for all.

Campaign Zero
Donate Here
From their site: Over 1,000 people are killed by police violence each year in America. We can end this violence by implementing research-based policy solutions at every level of government. This agenda outlines a set of policy solutions that can effectively reduce police violence nationwide. It includes policies that have effectively reduced police shootings and other forms of police violence in places that have implemented them. By scaling up what works we can achieve substantial reductions in police violence nationwide - saving lives and making communities safer.

Color Of Change
Donate Here
From their site: Color Of Change is the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by 1.7 million members, we move decision-makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for black people in America.

The Colorado Freedom Fund
Donate Here
From their site: Founded in 2018, Colorado Freedom Fund (CFF) is a revolving fund that pays ransom (posts money bond, pays cash bail) for people unable to afford the cost of buying their own freedom.

Community Justice Exchange
Donate Here
From their site: The Community Justice Exchange is a national hub for developing, sharing, and experimenting with tactical interventions, strategic organizing practices, and innovative organizing tools to end mass incarceration. We provide support to community-based organizations that are building a new vision of community justice through bottom-up interventions in the criminal legal and immigration detention systems.

Emergency Release Fund
Donate Here
From their site: The Emergency Release Fund is a grassroots response to grave public safety issues. 100% of your contribution is used to post bail for trans persons, people of color, and underrepresented communities at risk of injury and death.

Fair Fight
Donate Here
From their site: We promote fair elections in Georgia and around the country, encourage voter participation in elections, and educate voters about elections and their voting rights. Fair Fight brings awareness to the public on election reform, advocates for election reform at all levels, and engages in other voter education programs and communications.

Fight for Breonna -- Justice for Breonna Taylor Petition and Fundraiser
Donate Here
This fundraiser was established to assist Breonna Taylor’s family with financial support during this extremely difficult time and in their struggle for justice for the murder of Breonna Taylor.

George Floyd Memorial Fund
Donate Here
From their site: Established to cover funeral and burial expenses, mental and grief counseling, lodging and travel for all court proceedings, and to assist the Floyd family in the days to come as they continue to seek justice for George. Funds will also be committed to The Estate of George Floyd to help his children receive an education.

Grassroots Law Project
Donate Here
From their site: Grassroots Law Project bridges the gap between grassroots organizing and legal expertise in criminal justice reform by bringing millions of us together to address the most pressing and egregious failures of the system, hold powerful actors accountable, and advocate for deep structural change.

I Run with Maud – Justice for Amaud Arbery Fundraiser
Donate Here
From their site: This fundraiser was designed to assist Ahmaud's mother, Ms. Wanda Cooper-Jones, and her immediate family with financial support during this extreme difficult time and in their struggle for justice for the murder of Ahmaud Marquez Arbery.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund
Donate Here
From their site: The Minnesota Freedom Fund is working with the National Lawyers Guild and the Legal Rights Center to help pay bail for low-income individuals and provide supplies for those on the ground.

Minnesota Voice
Donate Here
From their site: A member-based coalition of non-profit organizations working toward permanent change in racial, social, and economic justice by increasing civic engagement and voter participation

Minnesota Freedom Fund
Donate Here
From their site: The Minnesota Freedom Fund pays criminal bail and immigration bond for those who cannot afford to as we seek to end discriminatory, coercive, and oppressive jailing.

  • They are also working toward safer conditions and quicker releases for those detained, since jails can quickly become hotbeds for the spread of coronavirus.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Donate Here
From their site: The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is America’s premier legal organization fighting for racial justice. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, LDF seeks structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and achieve racial justice in a society that fulfills the promise of equality for all Americans. LDF also defends the gains and protections won over the past 75 years of civil rights struggle and works to improve the quality and diversity of judicial and executive appointments.

National Bail Out
Donate Here
From their site: The National Bail Out collective is a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration. We are people who have been impacted by cages — either by being in them ourselves or witnessing our families and loved ones be encaged. We are queer, trans, young, elder, and immigrant.

North Star Health Collective
Donate Here
From their site: Our organizing collective core includes health providers — physicians, nurses, healers, herbalists, doulas. Many of us are also long term community organizers with diverse experience across a range of social sectors — affordable housing, environmental justice, women’s health, human rights. We work in alliance with mainstream and anti-authoritarian organizations to create a safe and healthy events. We stand in solidarity with the need for diverse strategies and tactics. We will not denounce fellow activists or organizations. That said, we believe in harm reduction. We are working behind the scenes to reduce risks. We believe in maintaining open lines of communication.

Pimento Relief Fund
Donate Here
From their site: We’re partnering with Pimento to provide black business without insurance relief after white supremacists set them on fire during the protests.

Reclaim the Block
Donate Here
From their site: Reclaim the Block began in 2018 and organizes Minneapolis community and city council members to move money from the police department into other areas of the city’s budget that truly promote community health and safety.

Showing Up for Racial Justice
Donate Here
From their site: SURJ is a national network of groups and individuals working to undermine white supremacy and to work toward racial justice. Through community organizing, mobilizing, and education, SURJ moves white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability.

Southern Poverty Law Center
From their site: Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the U.S. and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public. We also use the courts and other forms of advocacy to win systemic reforms on behalf of victims of bigotry and discrimination.

State Voices
Donate Here
From their site: State Voices supports a powerful network of coalitions fighting for multiracial political power using data, civic participation, and grassroots organizing. We work with organizations that engage and serve historically underrepresented and marginalized populations - including Black people, Indigenous people and other people of color, TLGBQ+ people, low-income individuals, single women, and youth.

Unicorn Riot
Donate Here
From their site: Unicorn Riot is a decentralized, educational 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization of artists and journalists. Our work is dedicated to exposing root causes of dynamic social and environmental issues through amplifying stories and exploring sustainable alternatives in today’s globalized world.

Podcasts to subscribe to:

Organizations to follow on social media:

Written by Aaron Sanders

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