For Thursday, October 22, 2020, 9 A.M.
Contact: Info@RACECambridge.org
New campaign aims to combat systemic racism in Cambridge’s Harvard Square
CAMBRIDGE, MA – A neighborhood association’s overtly racist comments and controversial opposition to a Black-owned and locally operated business in upscale Harvard Square, a heavily commercialized neighborhood of Cambridge, MA, have spurred a leading cannabis equity coalition to launch a citywide public awareness campaign to bring awareness to the systemic racism in Cambridge which maintains the economic status quo and which seeks to thwart plans for the business to operate in its proposed location.
The new public awareness campaign by the Real Action for Cannabis Equity (R.A.C.E.) coalition will include television and social media advertisements, mailings to area residents, and more, all aimed at protecting and ensuring opportunity for Black and minority-operated businesses like those that have been recently opposed by the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association (HSNA).
In Massachusetts and across the nation, the emerging cannabis industry has been marred by widespread and well-documented failures to ensure the equitable distribution of licenses to minority entrepreneurs and to other economic empowerment applicants. Advocates say these inequities further compound the incarceration and brutalization that misguided and inequitably enforced prohibition policies have disproportionately wrought upon Black and Brown communities.
