In 2001, veteran organizer Taj James founded the Movement Strategy Center to help transform the common challenges many of us face in the movement for racial justice. Through his dedicated work as a Bay Area organizer, Taj saw the need for local campaigns to increase their impact by forming powerful alliances that could affect state-level policy. He recognized the effectiveness of building alliances around a proactive vision, instead of a defensive reaction to right wing assaults. And like his many allies around the country, Taj wanted to build an alternative to the culture of despair and burnout that made it difficult to attract new people to the movement, and stifled the possibility of long-term change.
Taj developed innovative and effective solutions to these challenges. With a team that has grown steadily over the years, he built MSC to expand and share those solutions. Today, the Movement Strategy Center continues to help build a more strategic, collaborative and sustainable progressive movement.
Our team includes organizers, community-based researchers, organizational consultants, political strategists and communications specialists. As an intermediary, MSC’s strength is our ability to work at a national scale in a way that is guided by grassroots work and base-building organizations. We work alongside our community partners in order to help them realize their goals within a movement-building frame.
Over the past five years, Movement Strategy Center has worked with more than 300 organizations nationwide, and now operates with a budget of $1 million, 11 key staff and a trained group of consultant Associates who teach and advance our frameworks and tools.
