Hey friends! These last seven years have been packed full of challenges, triumphs, and stories. Lemme take you behind the scenes of OUR story:

Seven years ago, a tiny group of dedicated folks began putting every ounce of energy and passion they had into building a platform for BIPOC voices, local artists and activists, youth, emerging and award-winning journalists. In 2020, the rest of the world finally caught up to why that work was so important.

We quadrupled in size within a six-month period last year. The infrastructure that held up our organization from the beginning - a few overworked volunteers and contractors working on "Kraft macaroni paychecks", as our founder Marcus Harrison Green has described it - did not magically scale up at the same time.

We have big dreams for the future. We know this work is necessary, and we cannot stop here. We just need a little space to finish putting things together, a little pocket of air to swim up to. 

Our knees are buckling under all this weight, but we see you, community. We know you're right there, ready as always to jump in here and help us carry this forward - for those who can't, for those who've felt powerless, for those who've been surviving reliving trauma after trauma. 

If you have some level of privilege and you want to invest in preserving vanishing histories, celebrating overlooked brilliance, and amplifying unheard voices - start here. Give what you can. 

When we finish writing this next chapter for the Emerald, we hope it'll be a good one. And we hope YOU will be a part of it right there with us.