Music Legend Nile Rodgers’ ‘Youth To The Front’ Fund Combats Systemic Racism

Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Nile Rodgers appreciates the true meaning of family. The co-organizer (with bandmate and musician Bernard Edwards) of R&B band Chic, known for songs like “We Are Family” and “Le Freak,” which peaked at Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 list in 1978, recently launched a new Youth to the Front Fund (YTTF Fund) to support activists against systematic racism throughout the world. 

The YTTF Fund is part of Rodger’s We Are Family Foundation working to bring people of different ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds together. While the new initiative was not a direct response to the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, Rodgers explains that it did have an impact. There is no goal amount for the growing six-figure fund, as not to limit the amount of support and funding that will be provided to the under 30-year-old BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) youth activists, youth-led organizations, projects, innovations and creative solutions leading the fight against racism, inequality, inequity and injustice. 

“This fund will never end,” Rodgers says. “George Floyd’s unfortunate sacrifice was the catalyst for an engine of change being led by not only youth, but people all around the world who have seen the negative biproduct of systemic racism. I’ve never seen the world come together over one individual like this before.”

Rodgers considers the new fund to be a “simple gesture” that came about during a recent foundation board meeting in which global team leaders shared concerns about a general lack of funding for programs among partner organizations. Every single board member responded by matching donations.

“We are really humbled by how the fund seems to be growing–it is an idea that seems to resonate,” Rodgers says. “There are so many young people who are on the front lines, and sometimes their organizations need extra capital to reach their goals. We do many things, but we get our ideas from our kids.”

Rodgers, still the only African American to ever own a national music distribution company, has produced, written and played music for other leading artists including Madonna, Diana Ross, Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger. He also learned about racism at age 7 when, as stated on his foundation website, he was harassed by teachers, fellow students and adults in his New York City neighborhood. When he moved with his family to Los Angeles at age 12, Rodgers writes about being “threatened at gunpoint by various random policemen and gun-toting whites of all backgrounds.”

By the time Rodgers was 16 years old, he had joined New York’s Black Panther Party to stand up for racial equality and provide breakfast for school children as a subsection leader of the Harlem branch. At age 19, he began his first professional music job as a guitarist in the Sesame Street touring band. He traveled the world and witnessed racism on a global scale. Music, he says, continues to serve as his therapy and mode of breaking down racial barriers. 

“I’ve seen so much, and I’ve learned so much. In America, certainly proportionately, black people are on the lowest rung of the ladder,” Rodgers says. “What I hope for is that one day all people will truly feel equal…it will be something that we actually sense and know.” 

As racial equality and social justice efforts continue to build around the world, this week The American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), Artists Rights Alliance (ARA), Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), Future of Music Coalition (FMC), Music Artists’ Coalition (MAC), Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Songwriters of North America (SONA) issued a joint statement applauding the House Judiciary Committee’s passage of the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, a civil rights and police reform bill aimed at combating police misconduct, excessive force and racial bias in policing. 

“We applaud the House Judiciary Committee for its passage of the Justice in Policing Act and appreciate the leadership of Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, CBC Chair Karen Bass, and the Congressional Black Caucus. Today’s vote is an encouraging first step toward overdue change in policing practices that have unfairly targeted and oppressed Black Americans, and we look forward to passage in the full House of Representatives next week. We urge all members of Congress and the Administration to work together to quickly enact meaningful reform to a deeply broken policing system. We must not allow this moment to pass without real, lasting change.”