A Message from Girls Who Code: #BlackLivesMatter and the Fight for Racial Justice

Reshma Saujani, CEO & Dr. Tarika Barrett, COO

To our friends and family; to our communities and our allies; to leaders in tech and in politics; to our staff and our partners; to our girls:

We are writing to you after a very challenging weekend, preceded by an extremely difficult period of time marked by intense violence─physical, psychological, and emotional. Like many of you, we are grieving, we are angry, and we are in pain.

Our hearts ache for the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Stephon Clark, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Dominique Clayton, Bettie Jones, Atatiana Jefferson, Botham Jean, Walter Scott. For the countless generations of black, brown, and Indigenous Americans who have been grappling with the ongoing trauma of institutional racism for centuries.

The Girls Who Code community is not untouched by these realities. A majority of the girls we serve are black, brown, or low-income. The diversity of our staff reflects the diversity of our girls. As does our leadership. This community of ours has always been painfully familiar with the intertwined realities of racial injustice in America.

As an organization, our focus is on educational inequity and ensuring girls — especially the most marginalized — have access to opportunities and careers in tech.

We know that lack of women and people of color in tech is not separate from pay inequity, which is not separate from the wealth gap, which is not separate from the healthcare gap, which is not separate from voter suppression, which is not separate from police brutality, which is not separate from the way this pandemic has disproportionately impacted communities of color.

Each of these is related to the other, reminding us over and over and over again just how little this country values black and brown lives. So yes, we are grieving, angry, and in pain. And in truth, we are also deeply, deeply tired.

But not so tired that we won’t press on. Because there is no level of exhaustion that will stop us from fighting for a better future for our girls. So in the coming days and weeks, we are taking the following steps — many put forth by our staff — to show our solidarity with people of color, with our girls, and our community.

• CLOSING IN SOLIDARITY: On Tuesday, June 2nd, we are closing business in solidarity with other organizations to send a message that none of this is okay, that we are not okay. Further, we will provide our staff with optional out-of-office language that specifies the reason for the decision and includes access to anti-racist resources.
• USING OUR PLATFORM: For the next 8 days, to mark the 8 minutes George Floyd suffered before being killed, we will blanket our social media feeds with resources from people of color and organizations leading the work for racial justice. We will start on Wednesday, June 3rd — when our office reopens after our Day of Action.
• SUPPORTING STAFF: In the coming weeks, we will host Leadership Roundtable Discussions to allow staff to engage informally with senior leaders around topics such as change management, employee mental health and well-being, work-life balance and creating psychological safety in the workplace. We would like to thank our staff for proposing these support systems, for advocating for their colleagues. We would not be where we are without their leadership.
• LEARNING FROM BLACK LEADERS: We are committed to learning from allied organizations like Black Girls Code, Code2040, CSForAll, AllStarCode, Color of Change, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Equal Justice Initiative, Reclaim the Block; and to learning from and amplifying the voices of people of color leading work for racial justice like Rachel Cargle, Brittany Packnett, Danielle Moodie, DeRay McKesson, and more. This includes inviting in experts from the field to speak to our staff. Because we can always do better.
• CELEBRATING OUR GIRLS: We will continue doing what we always do — celebrating girls. For the next month, we are going to specifically highlight the positive contributions that black women and girls have made and continue to make to this country. Like this group of young girls who created a website to combat racial micro-aggressions, or these young women who created a website celebrating black girls’ natural hair.

These are by no means solutions to deep, entrenched, systemic racism. Not even close. These are merely small steps that, taken together by many, could move us in the direction of justice.

We said earlier that issues of racial injustices are intertwined. One act of injustice feeds another. But we believe, in our heart of hearts, that it works the opposite way too. Justice begets justice. When we say black lives matter we say black Americans deserve equal pay, deserve equal treatment under the law, deserve equal access to health care and education.

So, we will continue to think through what more we can do as an organization to lend our voices and platform to the fight for racial justice, and what more we can do to support our own staff who make it possible for us to engage in these fights in the first place.

It will take time, education, and conversation for all of us to move forward. But you — our community — gives us hope that we can move forward, that we will make progress. Because #BlackLivesMatter, #BlackGirlsMatter.

With love,

Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code

Tarika Barrett, COO of Girls Who Code