Black Lives Matter

Statement from Genesee Co-op FCU, June 2020

As a community, we are collectively mourning the tragic and unnecessary killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and David McAtee, to name some of the most recent lost black lives. We support the reinvigorated protest movement during the Coronavirus pandemic where black people have suffered some of the greatest harm, here in Rochester and nationwide. Black people in the United States should live with the same rights, opportunities, and protections as all other people.

For more than 400years black people have oppressively lived with the overwhelming weight of a system built on white supremacy**. Police violence, along with racism and discrimination in housing, health care, the judicial system, voting rights, employment, as well as lending and other financial services, have long formed the core of a system designed to favor some while keeping black communities from flourishing. This system of “structural advantage favors white people in social, political, and economic arenas.”**

We see this every day even at Genesee Co-op Federal Credit Union. We regularly work with black and brown members who face predatory interest rates or products from finance companies where white members have much more favorable rates. We do everything we can to help support these members. We help black members buy new homes, refinance cars at reasonable rates, and fight for equitable policy at the state level by participating in the NYS Equity Agenda Coalition. Yet we must confront our limited abilityon our own, to change this fundamentally unjust system and the damage it has wrought. We support black Americans’ call for justice and equality and for meaningful, long-term solutions to this systemic crisis including:

• ending funding of a “militarized” police force and all forms of police brutality,
• funding reparations for black communities, and,
• creating an economy that works for everyone.

We all need a system that not only treats all people equally but repairs the damage done specifically to black Americans. We encourage all the member-owners of Genesee Co-op to join us in following the leadership of our black and brown members and community leaders as we rise up together for a more just and equitable nation and an economy that values racial equity at its core. Black Lives Matter.

 ** White Supremacy: “A system of structural advantage; favors white people in social, political, and economic arenas.” Baratunde Thurston, TED Talk: How to deconstruct racism, one headline at a time.