A new initiative focused on leveraging designers' "professional connections and privileges in the name of advancing justice" offers an easy and effective way of reaching professional organizations, leading architecture firms, political entities, and academic institutions via email. 

Hosted on the website of architecture and urban design studio Colloqate, the DAP: Design Justice for Black Lives initiative, which is aligned with the design justice movement and is undertaken in solidarity with the Movement of Black Lives, automatically generates email messages preloaded with contact information for industry and academic leaders that individuals can send out to advocate for change within the design fields. The effort is the latest installment of Colloqate's Design As Protest (DAP) effort, an ongoing series of projects that instrumentalize "design as a means to speak out in support of the disinherited and marginalized communities" by exposing and working against the injustice, discrimination, and hate built into physical spaces around the country.

Text describing the project on the Colloqate website explains: "We need to make sure that professional organizations, leading firms and offices, and local professional organizers hear our demands and use their power to establish policy that advances justice within our fields."

The initiative was created as part of an effort to push for cultural change among design organizations in the aftermath of nationwide Black Lives Matter-led protests advocating for racial justice on behalf of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others who have been killed by police officers. 

The Design Justice for Black Lives initiative was created by Hip Hop Architecture Camp Founder Michael Ford, Public Design Agency Founder and Director Taylor Holloway, Colloqate Design Principal Bryan Lee, Jr., and Civic Creatives Director of Design and Social Practice De Nichols. 

The effort is one of several initiatives underway by the organizers that aims to refocus professional and academic architectural discourse around the issue of social and racial justice for Black Americans.