Organizations Addressing Police Accountability and Racial Justice
View an interactive map of organizations addressing police accountability and racial justice.
Please note that this list is in formation and is regularly expanded based on recommendations from the field and from funders. If you would like to suggest an organization for this list, or you are part of an organization that you think should be on this list, please write to us at fundersforjustice@nfg.org.
ALABAMA
The Ordinary People Society (TOPS)
T.O.P.S. is a nonprofit, faith-based organization that offers hope, without regard to race sex, creed, color or social status, to individuals and their families who suffer the effects of drug addiction, incarceration, homelessness, unemployment, hunger and illness, through comprehensive faith-based programs that provide a continuum of unconditional acceptance and care.
ARIZONA
ACLU of Arizona
The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone.
Arizona Center for Empowerment
The Arizona Center for Empowerment (ACE) educates, empowers and engages our state’s working families to create solutions to issues of social and economic justice.
Living United for Change in Arizona
LUCHA is a dynamic, membership-led grassroots organization building power with Arizona’s working families to advance social, racial, and economic justice for all. Through leadership development, grassroots campaigns, advocacy and civic engagement, we seek to create an Arizona in which every person enjoys equal rights, opportunities and protections.
Poder in Action
Founded in 2013, Poder in Action (previously Center for Neighborhood Leadership), focuses on leadership development, systems change, and moving local public policy. Poder in Action’s mission is to build power to disrupt and dismantle systems of oppression and determine a liberated future as people of color in Arizona through our lived experience, leadership development and civic participation. Poder in Action is led by organizers who began as volunteers within the organization and created programs based on their personal experience with injustice in the immigration, criminal justice, and education systems. Each program builds community power by centering those who are most impacted by systemic oppression.
Puente Movement
The Puente Human Rights Movement is a grassroots migrant justice organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. We develop, educate, and empower migrant communities to protect and defend our families and ourselves.
Trans Queer Pueblo
Trans Queer Pueblo, formed in 2016 as a merger between Arcoiris Liberation Team and the Arizona Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, is a grassroots group working for the liberation of trans/queer migrant communities in Phoenix, both in side and outside of detention walls.
CALIFORNIA
All of Us or None
All of Us or None is a grassroots civil rights organization fighting for the rights of formerly- and currently- incarcerated people and our families. We are fighting against the discrimination that people face every day because of arrest or conviction history. The goal of All of Us or None is to strengthen the voices of people most affected by mass incarceration and the growth of the prison-industrial complex. Through our grassroots organizing, we will build a powerful political movement to win full restoration of our human and civil rights.
Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment
Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) is a multi-racial, democratic, non-profit community organization building power in low-to-moderate-income neighborhoods to stand and fight for social, economic, and racial justice. We’re still very much in the process of planning and implementing our policing work, but it is an area of high interest to our members. We’re excited to discuss it more and interface more with other groups working on the issue.
Anti Police Terror Project
The Anti Police-Terror Project began as a project of the ONYX Organizing Committee. We are a Black-led, multi-racial, intergenerational coalition that seeks to build a replicable and sustainable model to eradicate police terror in communities of color. Founding coalition members include the Black Power Network, Community Ready Corps, Workers World and the Idriss Stelley Foundation.
Black Organizing Project
The Black Organizing Project is a Black member-led community organization working for racial, social, and economic justice through grassroots organizing and community-building in Oakland, California. The Black Organizing Project launched the Bettering Our School System campaign in October 2011, in response to the murder of 20-year old unarmed Black man by Oakland School Police on school campus. The primary goals of the campaign are to: End the criminalization of Black and Brown students in the Oakland Unified School District and to invest in alternative models of school safety that don’t rely on police.
BlackOut Collective
The BlackOUT Collective is a full service Black Direct Action collective, which provides on the ground support, training and the opportunity for deep space visioning in communities that prioritize the liberation of Black people.
California Families to Abandon Solitary Confinement
Born from the first July 2011 hunger strike initiated in the Pelican Bay SHU, a movement of family members came together in September 2011 to support efforts to end solitary confinement in California’s prisons. California Families Agaisnt Solitary Confinement (CFASC) is dedicated to stopping the inhumane treatment of prisoners within the California Penal System, especially those held in solitary confinement. Our ultimate goal is to end the use of solitary confinement; our short-term goals are to reduce its use and to insist on due process and fairness. We support the five core demands put forth by the Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers.
Causa Justa :: Just Cause
Causa Justa :: Just Cause is a multi-racial, grassroots organization building community leadership to achieve justice for low-income San Francisco and Oakland residents.
Coalition for Police Accountability
The mission of the Coalition for Police Accountability is to advocate for accountability of the Oakland Police Department to the community so that the Oakland Police Department operates with equitable, just, constitutional, transparent policies and practices that reflect the values and engender the trust of the community. CPA won a ballot initiative for an independent police oversight commission in 2017. Now, CPA is using the momentum from that victory and the new commission to address the structural failures which prevent fair but meaningful discipline of sworn officers who do not uphold the oath to protect the community. CPA ensures that communities most impacted by police predation, sex workers, homeless, formerly incarcerated, immigrants, young people, low-income and communities of color, are engaged in setting the agenda, policy demands, and strategies.
Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice
The mission of CURYJ (pronounced Courage) is to interrupt the cycles of violence and poverty by motivating and empowering young people that have been impacted directly and indirectly by the criminal justice system to make positive changes in their lives and prepare them to become the community leaders of today. CURYJ believes that youth and young adults are the experts on the issues effecting their lives and need to be involved in developing the policies that impact them and is dedicated to providing training and technical assistance to elevate youth voice and power.
Dignity and Power Now
Dignity and Power Now (DPN) is a grassroots organization based in Los Angeles that fights for the dignity and power of incarcerated people, their families, and communities. In doing so DPN wages a fight for all lives because the prison industrial complex forms an imaginative limit on everyone’s capacity to envision freedom and liberation.
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights advances racial and economic justice to ensure dignity and opportunity for low-income people and people of color. The Ella Baker Center is named for an unsung hero of the civil rights movement who inspired and guided emerging leaders. We build on her legacy by giving people opportunities and skills to work together to strengthen our communities so that all of us can thrive. We believe that every person has the right to safety, to dignity, to equality, and to self-determination. Our work aims to defend and advance these rights in the United States.
Justice Teams Network
The Justice Teams Network aims connect organizations and groups committed to eradicating state violence from our communities within a powerful network that shares resources, information, and campaign strategy in real time; strengthening impact and resilience.
Los Angeles Community Action Network
The Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) is a grassroots organization working to promote human rights in Downtown and South Los Angeles. We engage in community organizing, leadership development, community education, grassroots media, policy advocacy, legal partnerships/litigation, and other strategies and tactics that strengthen and protect housing rights, civil rights, food justice and gender justice. Since 2005, we have engaged in police monitoring and other tactics to hold LAPD accountable, with a particular focus on the intense “broken windows” policing used in the Skid Row community as a tool of gentrification, segregation and mass criminalization.
School of Liberty and Liberation
SOUL is a school to build a movement. SOUL is working to lay the groundwork for a strong social justice movement by supporting the development of a new generation of organizers rooted in a systemic change analysis -especially people of color, young women, queer and transgender youth and low-income people. We believe that – in order for organizers to build an effective movement for fundamental social change – they need support to develop the nuts-and-bolts organizing skills they need to mobilize their communities and to deepen their political analysis and their visions for fundamental social change. SOUL helps to build the capacity of organizers and leaders of grassroots organizations to win systemic change.
Young Gifted and Black
The mission of Young, Gifted and Black, (YGB), is to engage African-American young people in the teaching and learning of their rich history and culture. This is accomplished through the active involvement of these young people in the study and memorization of poetry, essays, rhythms, and music by African-American writers, poets, and musicians. Presentations of what they have learned are presented to the community. By learning and teaching this vital information, they become strong in voice and spirit as they internalize and strengthen the foundation on which they stand. The hope is that in knowing from whence they came, they have much greater clarity in using their innate power to plan where they want to go.
Youth Justice Coalition
The Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) is working to build a youth, family and prisoner-led movement to challenge race, gender and class inequality in Los Angeles County’s and California’s juvenile injustice systems. Our goal is to dismantle policies and institutions that have ensured the massive lock-up of people of color; widespread police violence, corruption and distrust between police and communities; disregard of youth and communities’ Constitutional and human rights; the construction of a vicious school-to-jail track; and the build-up of the world’s largest network of juvenile halls, jails and prisons. The YJC uses direct action organizing, advocacy, political education, transformative justice and activist arts to mobilize system-involved youth, families and our allies – both in the community and within lock-ups – to bring about change.
COLORADO
Colorado Anti-Violence Project / Survivors Organizing for Liberation
Dedicated to eliminating violence within and against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA) communities in Colorado, and providing the highest quality services to survivors.
FLORIDA
Dream Defenders
The Dream Defenders develop the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities.
Action Now
Action Now is a multi-issue grassroots organization of working families in the Chicago metro area. Our issue campaigns come out of listening to community residents through regular monthly meetings, engaging the base by going door-to-door and mobilizing all residents to take part in their community. Our leadership development includes formal leadership training and active involvement of members in the planning, implementation and evaluation of issue campaigns. Action Now has performed rolls calls and smoke out on our west side and south side communities. We have also discussed in our monthly organizational ward meetings the extent of overreach, as well as the absence of police in our neighborhoods.
Chicago Torture Justice Memorial and People’s Law Office
Chicago Torture Justice Memorials aims to honor and to seek justice for the survivors of Chicago police torture, their family members and the African American communities affected by the torture. In 2010 CTJM, a group of attorneys, artists, educators, and social justice activists, put out a call for speculative memorials to recall and honor the two-decades long struggle for justice waged by torture survivors and their families, attorneys, community organizers, and people from every neighborhood and walk of life in Chicago. This effort culminated in a major exhibition of 75 proposals and a year-long series of associated teach-ins, roundtables, and other public events in 2011-2013. CTJM now turns its attention to a campaign for reparations for those affected by Chicago Police torture, and to working in solidarity with other groups and individuals for racial justice and to end police violence and mass incarceration.
LOUISIANA
breakOUT
BreakOUT! seeks to end the criminalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth to build a safer and more just New Orleans. BreakOUT! builds on the rich cultural tradition of resistance in the South to build the power of LGBTQ youth ages 13-25 and directly impacted by the criminal justice system through youth organizing, healing justice, and leadership development programs.
Louisiana Justice Institute
Louisiana Justice Institute is a non-profit legal advocacy organization and law firm that fosters and supports social justice campaigns for poor communities, and communities of color in Louisiana.
Safe Streets/Strong Communities
Safe Streets/Strong Communities is a community-based organization that campaigns for a new criminal justice system in New Orleans, one that creates safe streets and strong communities for everyone, regardless of race or economic status.
Women with a Vision
Women With A Vision (WWAV) is a community-based non-profit, founded in 1989 by a grassroots collective of African-American women in response to the spread of HIV/AIDS in communities of color. Originally focused on health promotion and community outreach, we have expanded our focus to include policy-level initiatives that negatively affect women and communities of color within Louisiana and elsewhere.
MINNESOTA
Communities United Against Police Brutality
Communities United Against Police Brutality is an all-volunteer organization of survivors of police brutality, family members of people hurt or killed by police, and allies. Their goal is to provide a structure for survivors to regain their dignity and power, working together with others to bring police brutality to an end. They operate a 24-hour hotline for police brutality cases, provide courtwatch and copwatch, and have achieved a number of important measures to increase police accountability, including a class action lawsuit that put cameras in all of the squad cars in Minneapolis.
Neighborhoods Organizing for Change
NOC is a member-led organization working in under resourced neighborhoods in the Minneapolis/St Paul Metro area. NOC members have been beaten and harassed on multiple occasions by the Minneapolis police dept. In response NOC has pushed the city of Minneapolis to invest and commit to $1.1 million in police body cameras as part of the 2014 city budget. We plan to make sure that the community is involved in the project.
MISSOURI
Coalition Against Police Crimes & Repression
The Coalition Against Police Crimes & Repression (CAPCR) consists of community activists and advocates who fight for better police oversight and accountability. Current initiatives include short and long-term response to the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson and an ongoing effort to establish an empowered citizen review board in the City of St. Louis.
Hands Up United
Hands Up United is striving for a world where we deal with harm in their communities through healing, love, and kinship.
Millennial Activists United
Millennial Activists United is a youth-led grassroots organization that focuses on educating and empowering our communities. Activist collective created by queer black women. Ferguson made. Building grassroots power and leadership.
Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment
Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) seeks to be a powerful organization of low- and moderate-income people building power in our communities. We strive to transcend divisions of class, age and race as we envision and build the more just, sustainable world in which we would like to live.
The Organization for Black Struggle
Our mission is to build a movement that fights for political empowerment, economic justice and the cultural dignity of the African-American community, especially the Black working class.
WeCopwatch
WeCopwatch, a national Copwatch group dedicated to educating the public and community groups impacted by police violence about their rights when stopped by law enforcement, and how to safely and effectively document police interactions with the public.
Young Activists United St. Louis
YSTL is a bridge organization that provides leadership training and opportunities for social engagement and empowerment. We connect people on campuses, in their workplaces, and in their home communities to the social justice community in St. Louis. We seek to empower youth to become the next generation of activists in the social justice movement and stand with young people and students to fight for social change.
NATIONAL
ABFE: A Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities
ABFE is a membership-based philanthropic organization that advocates for responsive and transformative investments in Black communities. Partnering with foundations, nonprofits and individuals, ABFE provides its members with professional development and technical assistance resources that further the philanthropic sector’s connection and responsiveness to issues of equity, diversity and inclusion.
Advancement Project
Advancement Project is a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization. Rooted in the great human rights struggles for equality and justice, AP exists to fulfill America’s promise of a caring, inclusive and just democracy. AP uses innovative tools and strategies to strengthen social movements and achieve high impact policy change.
Amnesty International
Amnesty has a long record of mobilization, reports, and initiatives around police accountability for over a decade in the US and Europe.
Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund
Founded in 1974, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) is a national organization that protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans. By combining litigation, advocacy, education, and organizing, AALDEF works with Asian American communities across the country to secure human rights for all. AALDEF focuses on critical issues affecting Asian Americans, including immigrant rights, civic participation and voting rights, economic justice for workers, language access to services, educational equity, housing and environmental justice, and the elimination of anti-Asian violence, police misconduct, and human trafficking.
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) is a national non-profit, non-partisan organization working to restore the rule of law and our constitutional rights and liberties. We aim to make police and intelligence agencies accountable to we, the people whom they serve. BORDC supports an ideologically, politically, ethnically, geographically, and generationally diverse grassroots movement, focused on educating Americans about the erosion of our fundamental freedoms; increasing civic participation; and converting concern and outrage into political action.
Black Alliance for Just Immigration
BAJI provides the African American community with a progressive analysis and framework on immigration that links the interests of African Americans with those of immigrants of color. BAJI’s analysis emphasizes the impact of racism and economic globalization on African American and immigrant communities as a basis for forging alliances across these communities.
Black Lives Matter
BlackLivesMatter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.
Black Organizing for Leadership & Dignity
BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity) is a national training program developed through a collaboration between the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO) and Social Justice Leadership.
Black Women’s Blueprint
Black Women’s Blueprint, Inc. is a civil and human rights organization of women and men.
Black Youth Project 100
Black Youth Project 100 (BYP 100) is an activist member-based organization of Black 18-35 year olds, dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people.
BMAfunders
Black Male Achievement is not just a “black issue,” it’s an American issue.
Bolder Advocacy
Bolder Advocacy promotes active engagement in democratic processes and institutions by giving nonprofits and foundations the confidence to advocate effectively and by protecting their right to do so.
Brotherhood/Sister Sol
Founded in 1995, The Brotherhood/Sister Sol (Bro/Sis) provides comprehensive, holistic and long-term support services to youth who range in age from eight to twenty-two.
Build People’s Power Assemblies
Peoples Power Assemblies organize to empower workers & oppressed people to demand jobs, education & healthcare while fighting against racism, police terror, sexism & LGBT bigotry.
Center for Constitutional Rights
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
ColorofChange
ColorOfChange.org is comprised of Black folks from every economic class, as well as those of every color who seek to help our voices be heard. Our members are united behind a simple, powerful pledge: we will do all we can to make sure all Americans are represented, served, and protected – regardless of race or class.
Critical Resistance
Critical Resistance is a national grassroots organization with a prison industrial complex abolition orientation.
Direct Action for Rights & Equality
Direct Action for Rights & Equality (DARE) is membership organization whose mission is to organize low income families in communities of color for social, political and economic justice.
Enlace: Organizing for Racial and Economic Justice
Enlace is a strategic alliance of low-wage worker centers, unions, and community organizations in Mexico and in the U.S. We support our member organizations through capacity building trainings and strategic campaigning. Enlace works to create cross border and multiracial coalitions across sectors to build a stronger international peoples movement for self-determination. Our work will tip the power balance back to the working people. We have been working on addressing police violence and ICE/Police collaboration, and also targeting prisons through campaigns.
Families for Freedom
Families for Freedom started in the aftermath of 9/11 when Arab and Muslim men had their civil liberties stripped from them, forced to report to the government on the sole basis of their nationality.
#FitTheDescription
Fitting The Description is a 501.c.3, non-profit organization established to help build awareness of the countless number of individuals who are wrongfully detained and/or arrested each day because they "fit the description."
Forward Together
Forward Together is a multi-racial organization that works with community leaders and organizations to transform culture and policy to catalyze social change.
Freedom Side
They’re a collective of young leaders of color, standing together at the front lines of the fight for racial justice.
Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation
The FCCP exists to promote civic participation as a key to making our democracy work.
Ingoma Foundation
The Ingoma Foundation mission is to create and implement models of sustainable community development targeting economically distressed citizens and neighborhoods.
Justice Now
Justice Now works to build a movement among people in women’s prisons to stop imprisonment and challenge state violence. Toward this goal we work with people currently imprisoned in women’s prisons and jails, formerly imprisoned people and communities targeted by the prison industrial complex in California. We pride ourselves on our cross-movement building; we collaborate with racial justice, reproductive justice, human rights, and anti-prison groups to fulfill our mission and work towards a stronger social justice movement. Ultimately we believe that until we are all free from systems of oppression no one will be free, we see our cross-movement work as working towards that goal. We use a strong direct service component that is deliberately designed to support activists in prison, and bring to the abolitionist community a direct connection to people in prison. Justice Now has worked to re-invigorate this connection and to dispel the myth that you can’t do long-term change work while also helping address violence people experience in the here and now. We believe the two types of work are intrinsically linked and are how we outreach to the bulk of our community.
Law Enforcement Action Partnership
The Law Enforcement Action Partnership’s mission is to unite and mobilize the voice of law enforcement in support of drug policy and criminal justice reforms that will make communities safer by focusing law enforcement resources on the greatest threats to public safety, promoting alternatives to arrest and incarceration, addressing the root causes of crime, and working toward healing police-community relations.
Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States.
Local Progress
Local Progress is a national network that supports, connects, and unites progressive local elected officials and allied organizations from across the nation.
Million Hoodies Movement for Justice
Million Hoodies Movement for Justice is a national organization with over 50,000 members working to protect and empower young people of color from racial profiling and senseless gun violence through creative technology, strategic communications, and grassroots power building.
Movement Strategy Center
MSC is dedicated to transformative movement building.
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is America’s premier legal organization fighting for racial justice.
People’s Organization for Progress
POP works for racial, social, economic, justice, and peace.
PICO National Network, Live Free Campaign
The Live Free Campaign is a movement of faith-based organizations and congregations committed to addressing the causes of pervasive violence and crime in our communities. We believe that the mass criminalization and incarceration of people of color, coupled with the lack of meaningful and quality opportunities, have contributed to a state of crisis in our country. Live Free is dismantling the mass-criminalization of people of color by mobilizing the faith community to action using the voices of those closest to the pain. More than 60 Live Free clergy and organizers participated in the Ferguson protests, and the campaign has provided training, support and resources to protest leaders in Ferguson, Baltimore, Waller County Texas, Alameda County California, and other places responding to police violence.
PolicyLink
PolicyLink is a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity by lifting up what works.
Project NIA
Project NIA offers a new way of thinking about crime and violence.
Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation
Race Forward advances racial justice through research, media and practice.
Sankofa
Sankofa is a social justice organization founded by Harry Belafonte that enlists the support of today’s most celebrated artists and influential individuals in collaboration with grassroots partners to elevate the voices of the disenfranchised, and to promote peace and equality.
TGI Justice Project
TGI Justice Project is a group of transgender people—inside and outside of prison—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom. We work in collaboration with others to forge a culture of resistance and resilience to strengthen us for the fight against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures. We seek to create a world rooted in self determination, freedom of expression, and gender justice. TGIJP’s members are low income transgender women of color and our families who are in prison, formerly incarcerated, or targeted by the police.
The Center for Popular Democracy
The Center for Popular Democracy works to create equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy in partnership with high-impact base-building organizations, organizing alliances, and progressive unions.
The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity
PRE is a multiyear initiative intended to increase the amount and effectiveness of resources aimed at combating institutional and structural racism in communities through capacity building, education and convening of grantmakers and grant seekers.
The Security & Rights Collaborative
SRC makes strategic grants to protect and restore the civil rights of individuals whose communities have been targeted for profiling, surveillance, hate crimes and discrimination in the post-9/11 security environment of the United States.
The Gathering for Justice (Justice League NYC)
The mission of The Gathering is to end child incarceration while eliminating the racial inequities in the criminal justice system that enliven mass incarceration. Justice League NYC, an initiative of The Gathering, is a rapid response network that addresses urgent social, civil and human rights issues including police accountability.
Transgender Law Center
Transgender Law Center works to change law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression. We envision a future where gender self-determination and authentic expression are seen as basic rights and matters of common human dignity.
WeCopwatch
WeCopwatch, a national Copwatch group dedicated to educating the public and community groups impacted by police violence about their rights when stopped by law enforcement, and how to safely and effectively document police interactions with [...]
Abolitionist Law Center
The Abolitionist Law Center is a public interest law firm inspired by the struggle of political and politicized prisoners, and organized for the purpose of abolishing class and race based mass incarceration in the United [...]
Workers Center for Racial Justice
The Workers Center for Racial Justice works to increase access to quality jobs and strengthen working conditions and job security for Black workers and the families and communities that depend on them.
US Human Rights Network
The US Human Rights Network is a national network of organizations and individuals working to strengthen a human rights movement and culture within the United States led by the people most directly impacted by human rights violations.
Right to the City (RTTC)
Right to the City (RTTC) emerged in 2007 as a unified response to gentrification and a call to halt the displacement of low-income people, people of color, marginalized LGBTQ communities, and youths of color from their historic urban neighborhoods.
Build People’s Power Assemblies
Peoples Power Assemblies organize to empower workers & oppressed people to demand jobs, education & healthcare while fighting against racism, police terror, sexism & LGBT bigotry.
Justice Now
Justice Now works to build a movement among people in women’s prisons to stop imprisonment and challenge state violence.
Enlace: Organizing for Racial and Economic Justice
Enlace is a strategic alliance of low-wage worker centers, unions, and community organizations in Mexico and in the U.S. We support our member organizations through capacity building trainings and strategic campaigning.
PICO National Network, Live Free Campaign
The Live Free Campaign is a movement of faith-based organizations and congregations committed to addressing the causes of pervasive violence and crime in our communities. We believe that the mass criminalization and incarceration of people of color, coupled with the lack of meaningful and quality opportunities, have contributed to a state of crisis in our country.
TGI Justice Project
TGI Justice Project is a group of transgender people—inside and outside of prison—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom. We work in collaboration with others to forge a culture of resistance and resilience to strengthen us for the fight against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures.
Transgender Law Center
Transgender Law Center works to change law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression.
NEW JERSEY
ACLU of New Jersey
The ACLU of New Jersey is the state’s leading organization dedicated to advancing and defending civil rights and civil liberties.
Ironbound Community Corporation
ICC is community based organization in the Ironbound section of Newark, New Jersey. We work on an array of social justice and quality of life issues, including Fair Housing, Environmental Justice and Community Development, in addition to providing direct services.
Make the Road New Jersey
Make the Road New Jersey is a new organization that is part of the expansion of the Make the Road model nationally.
NJ Communities United
New Jersey Communities United is a new and growing progressive grassroots community organization committed to building power for low and moderate income people, predominantly in Newark.
NEW YORK
Alliance of Families for Justice
The Alliance of Families for Justice seeks to end mass incarceration by empowering the formerly incarcerated and their families via re-entry support services, legal support, advocacy and communication skills training, and voting rights.
Anti-Violence Project
AVP was founded in 1980 in Chelsea in reaction to neighborhood incidents of anti-gay violence.
Arab American Association of New York
Our mission is to support and empower the Arab Immigrant and Arab American community by providing services to help them adjust to their new home and become active members of society.
Assata’s Daughters
We are a Black women-directed, youth-led organization that organizes Black young people in Chicago by providing them with political education, leadership development, mentorship, and revolutionary services for the purposes of deepening, escalating, and sustaining the [...]
Audre Lorde Project
The Audre Lorde Project is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Trans and Gender Non Conforming People of Color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area.
Bronx Defenders
The Bronx Defenders provides innovative, holistic, and client-centered criminal defense, family defense, civil legal services, social work support and advocacy to indigent people of the Bronx.
Brooklyn Movement Center
The Brooklyn Movement Center (BMC) is a membership-led, direct-action, community organizing body based in Central Brooklyn (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and the surrounding area). We bring together residents to identify important issues in their lives, win concrete improvements in their community, and build power. BMC is staffed by local organizers, supported by volunteers, governed by a community-based board of directors, and guided by an advisory group made up of activists and organizers from across the city.
CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities
CAAAV works to build grassroots community power across diverse poor and working class Asian immigrant and refugee communities in New York City. Through an organizing model constituted by five core elements- basebuilding, leadership development, campaigns, alliances, and organizational development- CAAAV organizes communities to fight for institutional change and participates in a broader movement towards racial, gender, and economic justice.
Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions
The mission of the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions is to influence socio-economic, criminal and juvenile justice policy by providing research, advocacy and leadership training to formerly and currently incarcerated people, their families, communities, allies and criminal justice professionals.
Center for Social Inclusion
The Center for Social Inclusion works to identify and support policy strategies to transform structural inequity and exclusion into structural fairness and inclusion. We work with community groups and national organizations to develop policy ideas, foster effective leadership, and develop communications tools for an opportunity-rich world in which we all will thrive no matter our race or ethnicity.
Center on Race, Crime & Justice of John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The Center is a multifaceted multidisciplinary entity for exploring critical issues at the intersection of race / ethnicity, crime and justice. Through a visiting scholars program, community partnerships and collaborative efforts within the College and across the University, Center participants conduct funded research aimed at answering several of the “big questions” that plague our understanding of crime and justice in a diverse society.
Chhaya CDC
Chhaya CDC was founded in 2000 to advocate for the housing needs of New York City’s South Asian community. Our mission is to work with New Yorkers of South Asian origin to advocate for and build economically stable, sustainable, and thriving communities. Chhaya carries out this work in several ways, including free direct services, education and outreach, community organizing, and research and policy, as well as both local and citywide coalition-building. Our work encompasses tenant rights, financial capacity building, sustainable homeownership, foreclosure prevention, energy efficiency, women’s financial empowerment, workforce development, civic engagement, and broader community building and research and advocacy around community needs.
Child Welfare Organizing Project
Through organized client involvement and collective advocacy both inside and independent of the system, the Child Welfare Organizing Project will change / transform the quality of services provided to New York City families through the New York City child welfare system. CWOP is a self-help and advocacy organization of parents who have had contact with the New York City child welfare system. Most of our staff and board of directors are parents who have had children placed in foster care, succeeded in reuniting their own families, and now use this experience both to help other parents facing similar challenges, and to organize for system change.
Communities United for Police Reform
Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) is an unprecedented campaign to end discriminatory policing practices in New York, bringing together a movement of community members, lawyers, researchers and activists to work for change. The partners in this campaign come from all 5 boroughs, from all walks of life and represent many of those most unfairly targeted by the NYPD. This groundbreaking campaign is fighting for reforms that will promote community safety while ensuring that the NYPD protects and serves all New Yorkers. We are a movement that is here to stay – a campaign that will be a visible, lasting presence on the streets of neighborhoods citywide. We will be in communities and on the streets, educating people about their rights; and in the courts and on the steps of City Hall and the state capitol, demanding change to the NYPD — until these policies end.
Council on American Islamic Relations – New York
To enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility
The Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project is housed at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. CLEAR primarily aims to address the unmet legal needs of Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and other communities in the New York City area that are particularly affected by national security and counterterrorism policies and practices. Our work is defined by our relationships with communities and grassroots organizations whose members wish to shape and respond to national security and counterterrorism policies and practices affecting them. CLEAR’s community-oriented approach combines legal representation with other services directed at satisfying the fuller range of community concerns.
Demos
Demos is a public policy organization working for an America where we all have an equal say in our democracy and an equal chance in our economy. Demos is working to reduce both political and economic inequality, deploying original research, advocacy, litigation, and strategic communications to create the America the people deserve.
Desis Rising Up & Moving
DRUM – South Asian Organizing Center (formerly Desis Rising Up and Moving) is a multigenerational, membership led organization of low-wage South Asian immigrant workers and youth in New York City. Our long-term vision is to build the power of immigrant workers in the U.S in unity with all workers and communities for human rights. We see our movements for justice in the U.S. rooted in working in solidarity with people of the Global South for just global trade, economic, and foreign policies. Our cornerstone is building strong cross-community alliances across the U.S. and globe to amplify progressive movements- with African Americans, Latinos, Indigenous communities, Arab and Middle Eastern communities, labor, youth, civil rights, and Global South movements from Egypt, to South Asia, to Latin America.
Equality for Flatbush
Equality for Flatbush (E4F) is a new people of color-led, multi-national grassroots organization which does anti-police repression, affordable housing and anti-gentrification organizing in the Flatbush and East Flatbush communities of Brooklyn, NY.
Families Against Stop & Frisk
Families Against Stop & Frisk organizes to end the criminalization of our brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, grand-babies, neighbors, etc.
FIERCE
FIERCE is a membership-based organization building the leadership and power of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth of color in New York City.
Gay Men of African Descent
In 1986, Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD) was conceptualized in New York City, a result of the vision of founder, The Reverend Charles Angel who, together with a few of his closest friends, embarked on a mission to empower black gay men.
Immigrant Defense Project
IDP promotes fundamental fairness for immigrants accused or convicted of crimes.
Jews Against Islamophobia
Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition (JAIC) formed in September 2010 as a coalition of Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Jews Say No!, American Jews for a Just Peace, and individuals committed to challenging anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Arab racism.
Jews for Racial & Economic Justice
To pursue racial and economic justice in New York City by advancing systemic changes that result in concrete improvements in peoples daily lives.
Justice Committee
The Justice Committee (JC) is a Latina/Latino-led organization dedicated to building a movement against police violence and systemic racism in New York City.
LatinoJustice PRLDEF
For the past 40 years, LatinoJustice PRLDEF has been changing the way Latinos live their lives in the United States and the way our country has lived up to its ideals.
Legal Aid Society
The Legal Aid Society is a private, not-for-profit legal services organization, the oldest and largest in the nation, dedicated since 1876 to providing quality legal representation to low-income New Yorkers.
Make the Road New York
Make the Road New York (MRNY) builds the power of Latino and working class communities to achieve dignity and justice through organizing, policy innovation, transformative education, and survival services.
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is an organization of Afrikans in America/New Afrikans whose mission is to defend the human rights of our people and promote self-determination in our community.
Manhattan Young Democrats
The Manhattan Young Democrats (MYD) is an all-volunteer organization and the official youth arm of the Democratic party in New York county.
Marijuana Arrests Research Project
MARIJUANA-ARRESTS.COM has been created by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project.
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs/New York City Anti-Violence Project
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) is a coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected anti-violence organizations that works to prevent, respond to, and end all forms of violence within and against LGBTQ and HIV-affected communities.
New York Civil Liberties Union
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is one of the nation’s foremost defenders of civil liberties and civil rights.
New York Harm Reduction Educators
Social Justice, Human Rights, and the Promotion of Health, Safety, and Wellness for People Who Use Drugs or Engage in Sex Work
Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights
The Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights (NMCIR), is a non-profit organization, founded in 1982 to educate, defend and protect the rights of immigrants.
NY Communities for Change
New York Communities for Change is a coalition of working families in low and moderate income communities fighting for social and economic justice throughout New York State
Peoples’ Justice for Community Control and Police Accountability
Peoples’ Justices for Community Control and Police Accountability (Peoples’ Justice) is a New York City coalition of grassroots organizations working in Black, Latino/a and Asian communities.
Persist Health Project
Persist Health Project is a peer-led, community-based health organization based on Brooklyn, New York. We are by and for sex workers, trafficking survivors, and anyone who has traded sex for money, food, drugs, or other resources. We provide health referrals, health education, and peer support.
Picture the Homeless
Picture the Homeless is an organization founded on the principle that in order to end homelessness, people who are homeless must become an organized, effective voice for systemic change.
PROS Network
The PROS Network works to improve the conditions of people engaging in the sex trade in NYC through strengthening connections between sex workers, their direct service providers, and advocates. We support people of all genders who, by choice, circumstance, or coercion, engage in sexual activities for money, food, shelter, clothing, drugs, or other survival needs. Grounded in principles of social justice and human rights, the PROS Network embraces a non-judgmental, harm reduction approach.
Public Science Project
The Public Science Project conducts and supports participatory action research with a commitment to the significant knowledge people hold about their lives and experiences and a belief that those most intimately impacted by research should take the lead in shaping research questions, framing interpretations, and designing meaningful products and actions.
Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York
ROC-NY works to build power and win justice among restaurant workers who face exploitative and abusive workplaces.
Right to the City (RTTC)
Right to the City (RTTC) emerged in 2007 as a unified response to gentrification and a call to halt the displacement of low-income people, people of color, marginalized LGBTQ communities, and youths of color from their historic urban neighborhoods.
Sistas & Brothas United/Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition
NWBCCC members seek social, economic, environmental, and racial justice for our families, our communities, and ourselves.
Streetwise and Safe (SAS)
Streetwise & Safe (SAS) is a multi-strategy initiative working to build and share leadership, skills, knowledge and community among LGBTQQ youth of color who experience criminalization, particularly in the context of the policing of poverty, “quality of life” offenses, and involvement or perceived involvement in survival economies.
Sylvia Rivera Law Project
The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine their gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination, or violence.
T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights brings together rabbis and cantors from all streams of Judaism, together with all members of the Jewish community, to act on the Jewish imperative to respect and advance the human rights of all people.
The Anthony Baez Foundation
The Anthony Baez Foundation, founded by Iris Baez, is a resource that provides assistance to victims of police brutality and their families.
The Game Changers Project
We spotlight the stories and characters behind really good organizations.
Tribeca for Change
Tribeca for Change grows out of the progressive grassroots election campaign of Barack Obama and Organizing for America.
Trinity Lutheran Church
Trinity Lutheran Church is a vibrant, urban Christian community.
Turning Point for Women and Families
Turning Point is a community based, non-profit organization addressing the needs of Muslim women and children through crisis intervention, individual and group counseling, advocacy, outreach, education and training.
VOCAL-NY
Voices Of Community Advocates & Leaders (VOCAL-NY) is a statewide grassroots membership organization building power among low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, the drug war and mass incarceration, along with the organizations that serve us, to create healthy and just communities.
Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice
Guided by a prophetic faith, YMPJ’s purpose is to transform both the people and the physical infrastructure of blighted South Bronx neighborhoods and change the systems that negatively impact them.
Youth Represent
Youth Represent is a holistic youth defense and advocacy non-profit organization.
NORTH CAROLINA
Southern Coalition for Social Justice
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in August 2007 in Durham, North Carolina by a multidisciplinary group, predominantly people of color, who believe that families and communities engaged in social justice struggles need a team of lawyers, social scientists, community organizers and media specialists to support them in their efforts to dismantle structural racism and oppression.
OHIO
Cincinnati Black United Front
Cincinnati Black United Front was formed in 2000, in the wake of 14 downtown restaurants closing during the historic Jazz Festival weekend.
Ohio Student Association
The Ohio Student Association engages in values-based issue & electoral organizing, nonviolent direct action, advocacy for progressive public policy, and leadership development.
Racial Justice NOW!
Racial Justice NOW! is committed to dismantling structural and institutional racism in all areas of people activity. Our primary focus is on the institution of education and lifting up the voices of disempowered Black parents [...]
RHODE ISLAND
Olneyville Neighborhood Association
The Olneyville Neighborhood Association (ONA) organizes low-income families, immigrants communities, and people of color in Olneyville and beyond to create a diverse, community-led movement that wins economic, social and political justice.
PRYSM
We recognize that a cycle of violence keeps our youth, families, and community oppressed and disenfranchised. Our Vision is to confront and end state, street, and interpersonal violence affecting the Southeast Asian American community in Rhode Island.
SOUTHERN US
Highlander Research and Education Center
Highlander serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the U.S. South.
Project South
Founded in 1986, Project South has developed thousands of leaders within communities directly affected by racism and economic injustice in order to build social movements to eliminate poverty.
Southerners on New Ground
SONG is a home for LGBTQ liberation across all lines of race, class, abilities, age, culture, gender, and sexuality in the South.
TENNESSEE
Black Lives Matter Memphis
In the spirit of the birth of the Civil Rights movement, the Black Lives Matter Memphis principal objective is to progress and ensure the protection of all Black Lives regardless of gender, disability, levels of education, socioeconomics status, political beliefs, and sexual orientations, our organization promotes black unity, to achieve equality amongst our citizens. BLMM seeks to eliminate systematic oppression through awareness, education, and a demand for betterment and change for all black lives.
TEXAS
Mothers Against Police Brutality
Mothers Against Police Brutality is the new voice for justice for victims of police brutality, excessive force and unjust murders by law enforcement.
WASHINGTON D.C.
Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of the Deaf (HEARD)
Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of the Deaf (HEARD) is a DC-based all-volunteer nonprofit that focuses on ending police brutality of people who are deaf and people with disabilities--with a particular focus on deaf and disabled communities of color who make up the majority of those murdered by law enforcement annually.
WISCONSIN
Wisconsin Jobs Now
Wisconsin Jobs Now (WJN) is a non-profit organization committed to fighting income inequality from the bottom up and building stronger communities throughout Wisconsin.