- Project 2030
- Oct 31, 2025
- 9 min read
Updated: Nov 1, 2025
Project 2030: The Agenda For Black America vs. Project 2025
Let me be clear — we are at a crossroads that will define the next century of Black life in America. The choices we make today will determine whether we move toward a nation rooted in equity, or one that allows decades of progress in civil and human rights to quietly unravel. This isn’t alarmism; it’s reality. The ground beneath us is shifting — politically, economically, and culturally — and the decisions we make right now will decide whether we continue to advance the unfinished work of justice or surrender it to the forces of regression.
Let me walk you through what's at stake—and more importantly, what you can do about it.
Project 2030: A Blueprint We Can Actually Build With
When Sean T. Long and his team of visionary co-authors created Project 2030: The Agenda for Black America, they gave us something we desperately needed—a comprehensive roadmap forward at a time when the racial wealth gap keeps widening and our fundamental rights feel increasingly under attack.
Here's what struck me most about this work: Sean T. Long frames it perfectly when he says, "This is not just an agenda for Black America; it is a covenant for the nation." That's powerful. Because when Black America thrives, when our systems become more just, everyone gains access to genuine opportunity.
The Six Pillars That Could Change Everything
Project 2030 is built on six interconnected pillars—Economic Empowerment, Educational Equity, Health Justice, Criminal Justice Reform, Political Empowerment, and Technological Equity. But this isn't just academic theory. Each pillar provides actionable strategies that blend historical understanding with policy recommendations and lived experience.
Let me break down what this means for you:
Economic Empowerment tackles the systemic barriers that have kept your family, my family, Black families everywhere from building generational wealth. We're talking about concrete solutions to close the wealth gap.
Educational Equity addresses the disparities that start in kindergarten and compound all the way through college—the ones that make it harder for our kids to succeed no matter how brilliant they are.
Health Justice confronts the ugly truth that we face worse health outcomes across nearly every medical condition. This pillar demands better.
Criminal Justice Reform aims to end the mass incarceration pipeline that's been devastating our communities for generations.
Political Empowerment ensures our voices have genuine power in shaping policy—not just symbolic representation, but real power.
Technological Equity recognizes that the digital divide is the new civil rights frontier, and we can't afford to be left behind.
Project 2030 provides strategies to move Black America from survival to power, insisting that progress must be built everywhere Black people live, learn, and lead—from grassroots organizing to national policy.
Project 2025: The Threat You Need to Understand Right Now
Now let me tell you about Project 2025, because if you're among the 46 percent of Black Americans who've heard only a little or nothing about it, your lack of knowledge could hurt you and everyone you love.
Project 2025 is a 900+ page manifesto created by the Heritage Foundation with input from over 200 Trump-connected policymakers. This isn't a conspiracy theory I'm sharing with you—it's a publicly available policy agenda that civil rights organizations have analyzed and found deeply alarming.
Seven Ways Project 2025 Targets Us
Let me be direct about how this threatens our communities:
Civil Rights Rollbacks: Project 2025 calls for the elimination of affirmative action and diversity considerations across all federal agencies, directly undermining efforts to level the playing field for Black professionals and students. Think about your cousin who got her federal job through a diversity initiative. Think about your nephew applying to college. Think about all the black-owned firms that were able to get ahead because of diversity programs with the government. This affects them directly.
Educational Attacks: Project 2025 advocates for rolling back the Biden administration's student debt relief efforts, which have eliminated approximately $138 billion in debt—relief that disproportionately benefits Black borrowers who carry higher debt loads because of the racial wealth gap. If you're struggling with student loans, this policy would make your burden even heavier.
Voting Rights Suppression: Project 2025 also calls for a coordinated effort to weaken the political power of Black and Brown communities. From gerrymandered districts that dilute our votes, to stricter voter ID laws and voter registration purges targeting neighborhoods of color, these measures are quietly undoing decades of civil rights progress. In Georgia, SB 189 now makes it easier for partisan groups to challenge a voter’s eligibility, opening the door to mass challenges that could wrongfully remove thousands from the rolls. At the same time, laws that criminalize election assistance and limit absentee and mail-in voting are designed to suppress participation—especially among working-class families, seniors, and young voters. Even more alarming, proposals like adding a citizenship question to the U.S. Census would discourage many from participating, resulting in an undercount that robs our communities of fair representation and billions in federal funding for schools, healthcare, and infrastructure over the next decade.
Economic Devastation: Project 2025 proposes limiting overtime benefits for hourly and service workers, a group that includes 21% of Black Americans who rely on such jobs to make ends meet. It would also end funding guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, which fosters Black entrepreneurship and economic mobility.
Educational Dismantling: The plan advocates for the dismantling of the Department of Education and the withdrawal of federal support for low-income students, many of whom are Black.
Healthcare Rollbacks: Project 2025 aims to repeal the Affordable Care Act, reduce Medicaid funding, and eliminate programs aimed at addressing health disparities, which would lead to reduced access to healthcare services and worsening health outcomes for African Americans. This is what the current government shutdown is all about.
Executive Overreach: Under Project 2025's agenda, a future president could consolidate executive powers to have unilateral control over all federal decision-making, with little regard for the laws passed by Congress or the Supreme Court's decisions. This concentration of power threatens the very system of checks and balances that protects minority rights.
Here's What's Really at Risk—And Why You Should Care
The Legal Defense Fund didn't mince words: "Project 2025 will turn civil rights enforcement on its head by targeting programs designed to increase equal opportunity."
I need you to think about what this means for your life — not in theory, but in practice:
Your job, if you work in a federal agency or benefit from workplace equity programs.
Your ability to have discrimination complaints investigated fairly and without bias.
Your community’s political power and funding, determined by census data and fair redistricting.
Your student debt relief and the future affordability of college for working families.
The DEI programs that opened doors for you, your children, or your colleagues.
Your employment discrimination protections, including safeguards against bias in hiring, promotion, and pay.
Your right to vote, and the ease—or difficulty—of exercising it.
Your child’s ability to go to college, with access to scholarships, grants, and culturally responsive education.
Your access to affordable healthcare, including Medicaid expansion and reproductive rights.
Your small business opportunities, tied to minority business development programs that could be eliminated.
Your local schools’ resources, dependent on fair funding formulas and equity-based federal aid.
Your access to fair housing, as enforcement against redlining and housing discrimination faces rollback.
Your representation at every level of government, from city hall to Congress, shaped by who’s counted—and who’s left out.
Every. Single. One. Is under attack.
Two Paths: You Get to Choose
Project 2030 gives us a covenant—a promise that when we build systems that work for Black America, we strengthen democracy for everyone. It's a roadmap from survival to power.
Project 2025 seeks to return us to a time when civil rights protections were weak or nonexistent, when discrimination was openly practiced, when the playing field was permanently tilted against us.
As one analyst put it, we can't just plan for next week or next year—we need to plan and strategize and organize and fundraise and work and build with the next 100 years in mind.
Your Call to Action: This Moment Demands Everything
Here's what I'm asking you to do—what I'm demanding you to do—because this moment requires more than passive concern:
1. Educate Yourself Fully—Today
Read the analyses from the Legal Defense Fund, NAACP, and Thurgood Marshall Institute. Don't rely on social media soundbites. Dig into the actual policy proposals. What you don't know will absolutely hurt you.
2. Have Those Uncomfortable Conversations
Talk to your family members who dismiss Project 2025 as "just politics." Share concrete examples of how these policies would affect their lives. Tell your uncle what it could mean for his federal job if diversity and inclusion initiatives are dismantled. Explain to your daughter that her student loans and debt relief could vanish overnight, pushing her dreams further out of reach. Remind your mother that her healthcare coverage, the medication she depends on, or her right to make personal medical choices could all be on the chopping block. Talk to your cousin trying to start a business — and how the minority business development programs that give him a fair shot might be eliminated. Show your neighbor how changes to the census could erase your entire block from political representation and drain your community of millions in funding for schools, housing, and infrastructure. Tell your pastor or your friend who votes every election that stricter ID laws and voter purges could silence their voice before it’s even heard. And if your kids think none of this touches them, tell them about the future — about what happens when the DEI programs, scholarships, and protections that opened doors for you no longer exist for them.
3. Get Project 2030 and Use It
Purchase the Prject 2030: The Agenda For Black America. Study its recommendations. Implement its strategies in your sphere of influence. Whether you're a teacher, business owner, community organizer, or concerned citizen, Project 2030 offers concrete actions you can take right now. Share it with everyone you know.
4. Organize Your Community
Host discussion groups. Invite speakers. Create action committees. The civil rights movement wasn't won through individual action alone—it required collective power. Start building that power in your community this week.
5. Contact Your Representatives—Be Relentless
Make your voice heard at every level of government. Demand they oppose Project 2025 and support Project 2030's principles. Be specific about what you want. Be persistent. Be unrelenting. Don't accept generic responses.
6. Vote Like Your Rights Depend On It—Because They Do
Research every candidate's position on civil rights, DEI programs, voting rights, and education equity. Vote in every election—local school boards matter, state legislatures matter, Congress matters. Show up every single time.
7. Support Civil Rights Organizations Financially
The Legal Defense Fund, NAACP, Thurgood Marshall Institute, and other groups are fighting these battles in courts and legislatures right now. They need your financial support. Even $10 matters. Make it monthly if you can.
8. Use Your Platform Strategically
If you have social media, use it to share factual information from credible sources. Counter misinformation when you see it. Your voice matters, especially to people who trust you. Don't stay silent.
The Moment That Will Define Us
Let me be clear: "Attacks on the civil rights of Black and other marginalized communities weaken the fabric of our democracy and move us away from the fulfillment of our nation's ideals. At this critical moment, when Project 2025 aims to reverse civil rights protections for Black people and concentrate power in the hands of the privileged few to the detriment of our democracy as a whole, all communities must come together to fight for truth, justice, and equality as the cornerstones of our shared future."
This is that moment. Not tomorrow. Not next month. Right now.
Our ancestors marched across bridges knowing they might be beaten. They sat at lunch counters knowing they might be arrested. They rode buses into violence knowing they might not come home. They did this because they understood something I need you to understand: some moments in history are pivot points, where what you do—or fail to do—echoes through generations.
This is one of those moments.
I'm standing at this crossroads with you. I'm looking at two visions: one that builds power, equity, and justice for Black America and strengthens democracy for everyone; another that systematically dismantles the protections that make equality possible.
What you do in this moment is greater than ever because the stakes are greater than ever. The infrastructure of civil rights is under coordinated attack. The question is not whether you'll be affected—you will be. The question is whether you'll fight back.
Project 2030 provides the blueprint for building. Project 2025 provides the blueprint for destruction.
You get to choose which future becomes reality—but only if you act.
I'm choosing to fight. I'm choosing to organize. I'm choosing to speak up. I'm choosing to invest in Project 2030's vision while opposing Project 2025's agenda.
The time for sideline commentary has passed. The time for action is now.
What will you choose? More importantly, what will you do?
Because I promise you this: Our children and grandchildren will ask us what we did in this moment. Make sure you have an answer you can be proud of.
For more information:
Project 2030: The Agenda for Black America - Visit ourproject2030.com
Legal Defense Fund's Analysis of Project 2025 - Visit tminstituteldf.org
NAACP's "All Units Call" on Project 2025 - Visit naacp.org
The question isn't whether you care. The question is whether you care enough to act. I'm acting. Join me.
