Social Justice Fund NW is proud to present the grantees for the 2016 Criminal Justice Giving Project.
Together, the 2016 CJGP participants raised $153,245 – combined with a match from Riverstyx Foundation, the group surpassed their projected goal for a grand total of $213,245.
Criminal Justice Giving Project Members
Without further ado, here are the 2016 Criminal Justice Grantees:
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Organizations marked with a * after their name have hit SJF’s annual funding cap with this grant, meaning that they have received $30,000 in funding from Giving Projects in a single year. Hitting the funding cap means that their work has been funded across multiple Giving Projects and areas of focus.
Organizations marked with a ^ after their name designate an organization that has received a grant from SJF for the very first time.
Wisdom of the Elders^ (Portland, OR) Wisdom of the Elders, Inc. records, preserves, and shares Native American oral history, cultural arts, language concepts, and traditional ecological knowledge of exemplary indigenous elders, storytellers, and tribal leaders.
Funds from this grant will be used to establish partners and provide Discovering Our Story health and wellness workshops to Native American adults incarcerated in the Oregon State prison system; to Native American youth through Oregon Youth Authority and youth at Chemawa Indian School.
Voz Workers’ Rights Education Project* (Portland, OR) Voz Workers’ Rights Education Project VOZ is a worker-led organization that empowers diverse day laborers and immigrants to improve their working condition and protect civil rights through leadership development, organizing, education and economic opportunity.
Funds used will go to support local collaborative efforts as leaders and conveners of the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition (PIRC) on the Stop the Deportations campaign, the Unidos Con Fracisco campaign to stop the deportation of Francisco Aguirre, and the ICE out of Portland campaign to limite the presence and reach of ICE in the Portland area.
Native Action (Lame Deer, MT) The mission of Native Action is to empower Indian Tribes by advancing the fundamental human rights of women and girls to improve the quality of life for future generations. Native Action embodies the spirit and hope of Indian women and girls as the foundation of strong Indian communities. The vision of healthy and culturally resilient tribal communities propels the work of this organization.
Funding will go towards addressing the pervasive sexual abuse of Indian children; addressing the unique needs of Indian children engaged in the criminal justice system with incarcerated parents; inter-generational healing; and policy change.
Indian Peoples Action (Butte, MT) The mission of Indian People’s Action is to work in Montana’s border towns and reservations to empower Montana’s Indian families to address the economic, racial and environmental inequities that shape their lives. Founded in 1996, IPA works to achieve its mission by training and developing low-income Native American leaders, working to build strong coalitions and partnering with tribes, other Native organizations, and other progressive organizations in Montana.
Grant funds will go towards 1) combat racial profiling through race/ethnicity data collection on policing activities; 2) advance sentencing/diversion reforms that reverse the mass incarceration of Native women and families in Montana; and 3) push for reform/closure of the private prison in Shelby.
Colectiva Legal Del Pueblo (Burien, WA) Colectiva Legal del Pueblo uses community organizing and legal services strategies to strengthen undocumented communities to defend themselves from deportation and detention and transform the broken immigration system. Our mission is to build the power of Latino and working class communities to achieve dignity and justice through advocacy, education, and legal services.
Grant funds will be used to train and prepare marginalized people, specifically women and people who identify as LGBTQ, to take on leadership roles within the collective to increase movement building and develop campaign strategies to address immigration reform and systemic racism within immigration laws and policies both locally and nationally.
The Village of Hope (Seattle, WA) Village of Hope works in cooperation with other organizations and with elders, children, youth and adults to share resources, knowledge, creativity, and experience to build a strong and healthy community where people are liberated to live powerfully in every aspect of our lives.
This project will support the development, implementation and evaluation of a healing model that focuses on healing for Black families and individual impacted by the criminal justice system. This model will also support collaboration and relationship building with other communities of color working to develop relevant and effective healing processes. This project is a community based companion piece to prison based healing work proposed by the Black Prisoners Caucus.
AFSC (Seattle, WA) AFSC’s Seattle Community Justice Program consists of three components – Freedom Schools (FS), Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR) and End the Prison Industrial Complex (EPIC). The program develops youth and adult leadership to build racial justice, through participatory Freedom Schools, the cultivation of an ongoing youth organizing group, Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR) and a multi-generational organizing group, End the Prison Industrial Complex (EPIC). Through anti-racist community organizing, the program seeks to change policies and conditions that cause the “school to prison pipeline” and the disproportionate criminalization of youth of color.
TEACH (Seattle, WA) TEACH promotes cultural growth and provides incarcerated men the tools and platform to confront social issues that perpetuate discrimination, inequity and oppression among prisoners and poor communities of color.
This grant will allow the Black Prisoners to focus on the healing aspect of the Circle of Life Process. We will focus on healing in the prison environment and work to come to grips with the trauma that led us to incarceration, while helping our membership understand the systems impact and the history of oppression that we come out of. We are working on the prison based aspect of healing while our community partners work on the community aspect of healing. The two realities differ greatly.
FIGHT^ (Seattle, WA) Formerly Incarcerated Group Healing Together (FIGHT) was started by a group of Asian & Pacific Islander (API) men who were at one time incarcerated in the Washington State prison system. We support both currently and formerly incarcerated APIs through mentoring, advocacy, outreach, and political education. We encourage each other to embrace positivity, compassion, strength, hope, confidence, building healthy lives and healthy communities, while breaking the cycle of mass incarceration.
Funds will pay for outreach and administrative work, materials for programs inside Clallam Bay and other prisons, transportation/food/lodging for volunteers traveling to and from prisons around the state, speaker stipends for workshops on social justice issues inside the prisons, and convening with other groups working with formerly incarcerated APIs around the country and with our other allies.