The Criminal Justice Giving Project engaged 312 donors and raised $135,483 for 12 grants to community organizations building leadership and working towards justice in our systems. We are incredibly proud of this group! And we’re also incredibly honored to support these organizations!
Community to Community Development (Bellingham, WA)
C2C is a place based, women-led grassroots organization working for a just society and healthy communities. We are committed to systemic change and to creating strategic alliances that strengthen local and global movements towards social, economic and environmental justice. This $10,000 grant will support C2C’s campaign to end racial profiling, working to establish sustainable structural mechanisms to make sure all families and individuals in the community are treated fairly and humanely within the law.
Voz Workers’ Rights Education Center (Portland, OR)
Voz is a worker-led organization that empowers immigrants and day laborers to gain control over their working conditions through leadership development, education and community organizing. We operate the MLK Jr. Worker Center in Portland, which connects hundreds of workers a week with local employers and jobs. This $10,000 grant will provide general operating support. This grant will support Voz’s local collaborative efforts within the Activists Coming Together (A.C.T.) Network to end Police/ICE Collaboration in Multnomah County.
AFSC/Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (Seattle, WA)
The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice. Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR) program, created by alumni of the Seattle AFSC’s Tyree School Freedom School, is a group of youth which meets weekly to analyze issues of racism in systems of education and juvenile justice and to organize for change. This $10,000 grant will fund the EPIC (End the Prison Industrial Complex) Campaign — a youth-led initiative to directly confront issues of racism in the King county juvenile justice system, then propose and advocate for holistic alternatives.
Black Prisoners Caucus (Monroe/Clallam Bay, WA)
Founded in 1972, BPC organizes inside the Washington State Reformatory to provide a medium for African American prisoners to work collectively to improve their family relationships, their facility, and the communities they are absent from but still belong to. This $10,000 grant will support the new chapter at the Clallam Bay CorrectionCenter, a new prisoner-led education program at the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe, a continuing program to preserve and communicate the history of the BPC, and the BPC’s ongoing work to inform, educate, and motivate change and to continue to promote a holistic understanding of the root causes that leads to incarceration.
Rural Organizing Project (Scappoose, OR)
ROP works to development and maintain local pro-justice organizations that allow small town Oregonians to demand true democracy and dignity. We also challenge white supremacy, bigotry, and anti-democratic policies at every turn in order to transform the culture of rural Oregon in a way that ripples from the local outward to the state and federal. Our mission is to strengthen the skills, resources, and vision of primary leadership in local autonomous human dignity groups with a goal of keeping such groups a vibrant source for a just democracy. This $10,000 grant will support ROP’s economic justice work, putting rural communities at the center of the fight for economic justice, holding a statewide convening, Regional Convenings and Living Room conversations to develop shared analysis that connects the dots between Right-wing strategies to divide and dominate our communities for corporate profit, and working with member human dignity groups to develop local economic justice organizing campaigns that push-back against corporate control of politics, the economy and our democracy. This grant will support ROP’s work to fight the criminalization of immigrants in rural Oregon, combining strategies to challenge criminalizing laws and practices, Latino leadership development in rural Oregon, and alliance building and community education to work for human dignity of immigrants on the long and short-term.
Montana Immigrant Justice Alliance (Bozeman, MT)
MIJA is a statewide non-profit organization working for immigrants rights. Montana has a rich history of immigration, but in recent years the contributions that immigrants have made to our State have sometimes been overshadowed by negative stereotypes and false myths. MIJA works to educate the public about our migrant communities, and provide services to empower these communities. This $10,000 grant will support MIJA’s work to empower the immigrant community through leadership development and education; to fight against the criminalization and systemic discrimination of immigrants; and to provide statewide leadership through coalition building on immigration issues.
Montana Human Rights Network (Helena, MT)
MHRN is a grassroots, membership-based organization with over 1,600 members and seven local affiliate groups. Our mission is to promote democratic values such as pluralism, equality, and justice; to challenge bigotry and intolerance; and to organize communities to speak out in support of human rights principles and democratic institutions. This $10,000 grant will support a brand new initiative to build a coalition to broaden work on criminal justice reforms in Montana that promote dignity, security, and fairness for people who are, or have been, incarcerated and their families.
Incarcerated Mothers’ Advocacy Project (Gig Harbor, WA)
IMAP is a coalition of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, law students, lawyers, social service providers, and activists who seek to change the rights of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women in the State of Washington. We believe that the incarceration of women, and further, the separation of incarcerated mothers from their children due to incarceration, is a form of violence and reproductive oppression. We envision a day in which women of every color, ability, class and sexual orientation are able to help shape the policies that affect them and their families. In such a world, the rights of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women as persons and mothers would not only be respected but also supported. This $10,000 grant will support leadership development for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated mothers, help provide legal education to incarcerated mothers, and engage them in developing policy strategies to reduce the chances of family separation and incarceration of women and girls in Washington.
Red Lodge Transition Services (Portland, OR)
The mission of Red Lodge Transition Services (RLTS) is to prevent the incarceration of Native Americans and provide assistance to incarcerated Native Americans who are proactively working toward creating a better life for themselves, their children, and their communities. Our organizational goal is to promote and develop culturally competent pre and post incarceration programs that aid in prevention, foster responsibility, and promote respect and the empowerment of the individual, family and community. This $10,000 grant will provide general operating support for RLTS’ community organizing programs, including Keeping the Fires Burning (bringing Native traditions to Native Americans incarcerated in 10 Oregon correctional facilities) and ongoing re-entry support by and for Native Americans.
WinWin Network/Greater Spokane Progress (Spokane, WA)
Greater Spokane Progress, an affiliate of the WinWin Network, is a regional network of the Win/Win Network that consists of 30 organizations and leaders working together to create long-term change in Eastern Washington. GSP works on campaigns that address the root causes of systemic problems and builds our local political power. This $10,000 grant will support GSP’s Smart Justice Campaign, which will push Spokane County to fully fund and implement alternatives to incarceration and critical support services for non-violent offenders.
Seattle Young Peoples’ Project (Seattle, WA)
Seattle Young People’s Project is a youth-led, adult supported social justice organization that empowers youth (ages 13-18) to express themselves and to take action on the issues that affect their lives. At SYPP, young people gain an anti-oppression analysis, learn grassroots community organizing skills, and take action for positive community change. This $10,000 grant will provide general operating support in order to continue SYPP’s attack on the School-to-Prison Pipeline and work on a new Restorative Justice discipline model at Cleveland High School, as well as ongoing youth-led movement building work.
The Organization for Prostitution Survivors (Seattle, WA)
OPS accompanies survivors of prostitution in creating and sustaining efforts to heal from and end this practice of gender-based violence. OPS was started by survivors of prostitution and their allies to end the violence of prostitution and change cultural norms supporting it. OPS envisions a world of gender equality and mutuality, a world free from all forms of oppression and exploitation. OPS recognizes that men’s entitlement to demand sexual access to the bodies of ‘others’ in prostitution is a legitimized and entrenched practice based on an identification with dominance, which requires the sexualized subordination of members of historically victimized and oppressed groups. This $5,100 grant will fund a new Community Male Allyship program, working collectively with women survivors to train a cadre of male allies to support survivors, grow male allyship, and combat institutional sexism.