Democracy at Home
Location: Washington, D.C.
Region: United States
Founding: 2023
Founders/leadership: Sam Draisen, Dean Ilyas, co-founders
Democracy at Home enhances the political engagement of young leaders by promoting greater accessibility to the decision making process.
Democracy, at its most basic level, is direct involvement in decision making. Throughout its history, American democracy has fallen short of this most basic benchmark. Increasing accessibility to politics allows us all to claim power and influence decisions made by those we elect.
Democracy at Home works on projects that put decision making at the fingertips of the youngest segments of the electorate. The organization is committed to promoting intersectionality and anti-racism in all of its endeavors.
BIPOC Student Midwife Fund
Location: San Francisco, CA
Region: Bay Area, CA
Founding: 2023
Founders/leadership: Mika Cade and Evaly Long, project directors
The BIPOC Student Midwives Fund is a groundbreaking initiative aimed at promoting diversity in the field of midwifery, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. This fund is designed to provide financial assistance and educational resources to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students who aspire to become midwives.
Research has consistently shown that midwifery care can significantly reduce health disparities that disproportionately affect BIPOC birthing people and families. However, despite the growing recognition of the importance of midwifery care, the number of BIPOC midwives remains insufficient to meet the needs of the community. The BIPOC Student Midwives Fund seeks to address this critical issue by providing support to BIPOC students who are currently studying midwifery or who are interested in pursuing a career in this field. The fund will provide financial assistance to cover tuition fees, textbooks, and other expenses associated with midwifery education. In addition, the fund will also provide access to training and mentorship programs that will equip students with the necessary skills to become competent and compassionate midwives.
The BIPOC Student Midwives Fund is a powerful and transformative initiative that has the potential to positively impact the lives of many BIPOC communities. By supporting aspiring BIPOC midwives in their journey towards becoming skilled and culturally competent practitioners, the fund is helping to ensure that all birthing people and families receive the care they deserve.
TransFormation Alliance
Location: Atlanta, GA
Region: Southwest Atlanta
Founding: 2015
Founders/leadership: Amari Foster, managing director
The TransFormation Alliance (TFA) is a coalition of diverse organizations in the Atlanta region dedicated to creating connected and thriving communities. With a shared goal of linking people and communities around transit, TFA partners with like-minded organizations to ensure that investment in transit communities benefits all residents.
At the heart of their work is a belief that everyone should have access to the opportunities and benefits that transit investment can bring. To achieve this, TFA focuses on addressing the issues of equity and inclusion, particularly for those who have historically been marginalized or underserved. Through its various programs, TFA transforms communities by leveraging collaboration and opportunity. They work tirelessly to ensure that the benefits of transit investments are available to everyone, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or geographic location.
TFA’s dedication to creating connected and thriving communities through collaboration and opportunity transforms the Atlanta region. Their work towards equity and inclusion ensures that everyone can access the benefits of transit investments, paving the way toward a more equitable and sustainable future.
Alliance for Felix Cove
Location: Tamal-liwa (Tomales Bay)
Region: Northern California
Founding: 2022
Founders/leadership: Theresa Harlan
The Alliance for Felix Cove is dedicated to preserving and restoring the ancestral homelands of the Felix Family, who were the last Tomalko family to live on the western shores of Tomales Bay at Felix Cove, known as Laird’s Landing.
At least four generations of the Tomalko (Coast Miwok) Felix Family are known to have lived at the cove, beginning with Domingo and Euphrasia (Tomalko) Felix in the early 1800s. The Felix Family lived sustainably at the cove for generations, with vegetable gardens, farm animals, and by hunting and fishing. The family’s history includes building homes at Marshall Beach and Laird’s Landing, with extended family members living on other coves on the Marshall side of Tomales Bay. They also worked at Point Reyes Peninsula ranches as ranch hands and cooks. However, in 1956 they were forced to leave their homes due to eviction by ranchers.
Today, the Alliance aims to re-Indigenize their ancestral homelands and honor the legacy of the Felix Family. Led by Theresa Harlan, the daughter of Elizabeth Campigli Harlan and the niece of Victor Campigli, they advocate for the protection and restoration of the only remaining 19th century Tomalko (Coast Miwok Tomales Bay) built home at Point Reyes National Seashore.
Learn more about how volunteers built a tule canoe in honor of the Felix Family and other Támal-ko families whose homelands are now called Point Reyes National Seashore.
1 Million Madly Motivated Moms
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Region: National
Founding: 2018
Founders/leadership: Tansy McNulty, founder and CEO
1 Million Madly Motivated Moms (1M4) is a collective of Black women working to end police brutality by increasing accountability in police officer violence and supporting a pipeline of Black talent to legal, policymaking, and other criminal justice professions. Refusing to live in constant fear or rage, 1M4 set out to change the outlook for the future of their children and organized to provide both community and financial support for victims of these crimes.
With a background in supply chain management, founder Tansy McNulty applies the same thinking to social justice, to end police violence by 2038 and reduce both the number of lives lost and the costs of wrongful death suits for taxpayers. In December 2020, 1M4 identified that severe mental illness is a factor in at least 25 percent of police violence deaths. In response, the women of 1M4 actively compiled information to help spread awareness of Mobile Crisis Units (MCU) and Co-Responders (COR). These services are trained to de-escalate such situations and properly assess individuals experiencing mental health crises. Find their guide to saving lives here.
After Incarceration
Location: Florida; Texas
Founding: 2020
Region: National
Founders/leadership: Jose Pineda, founder and project director
After Incarceration is a diverse community of people impacted by systems of oppression. Many have been incarcerated, some still are. Drawing upon their lived experiences to identify the many ways in which all lives intersect, students, professors, public defenders, peacekeepers, activists, and advocates are reimagining life After Incarceration.
After Incarceration reconciles the conflict that comes from living in the contradiction of being free yet still confronting barriers and artificial divisions on a daily basis. By stripping away labels, After Incarceration affirms the value of every human being, recognizing themselves within each other. They listen, learn, and collectively imagine restorative reentry as an opportunity to introduce people to ideas, to grapple with the significance of those ideas as a community, and empower each person to pursue a life full of purpose.
After Incarceration uses restorative practice to transform the reentry experience using a community-centered model that supports people directly impacted by policies of over-policing, excessive punishment, and mass incarceration. By structuring equitable decision-making spaces, and empowering people to emerge as the leaders their communities need, they are moving at the speed of trust, drawing upon the strength of a shared humanity, countering the false narratives that divide, and collectively restorativing ways forward.
Art in Resistance (Past Project)
Location: Oakland, CA
Region: North America
Founding: 2019
The Art In Resistance fellowship was established by artists and changemakers to simultaneously support artists and movements for social change when there is a profound need to uplift beauty, solidarity, and resistance. The inaugural Art In Resistance Fellowship, awarded to Melanie Cervantes and Dignidad Rebelde, was designed to support proactive movement art, public education, and the interplay between art, community organizing, movement building, and social change.
The two year fellowship provided a stipend and benefits to facilitate innovative art production and practice that demonstrated a strong partnership with community leaders, social justice campaigns, and movements.
About the Inaugural Artist
Nationally recognized artist Melanie Cervantes (Xicanx) calls the San Francisco Bay Area home. It is where she creates visual art inspired by the people around her and her communities’ desire for radical social transformation. Cervantes’ intention as an artist is to create a visual lexicon of resistance to multiple oppressions that will inspire curiosity, raise consciousness, and inspire solidarity among communities of struggle. She holds a BA in Ethnic Studies from the University of California Berkeley.
Since receiving her stipend, she has created important work that has called attention to the atrocities occurring at the US/Mexican border and called for an end to family separation and deportation.
Her work is housed under the banner Dignidad Rebelde, a graphic art collaboration she co-founded with Jesus Barraza. Dignidada Rebelde produces screen prints, political posters, and multimedia projects. Barraza is an interdisciplinary artist with an MFAs in Social Practice and Visual Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. Dignidad Rebelde is a member of JustSeeds Artists Cooperative, a decentralized group of political artists based in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
As the stipend wraps, Cervantes and Dignidad Rebelde will continue to influence how we think about social issues facing the world — introducing her model of art activism to the Center For Empowered Politics, a new movement capacity-building organization that aims to train and develop new leaders of color and grow our movement infrastructure.
Bay Rising (Past Project)
Location: Oakland, CA
Region: Bay Area
Founding: 2015
Founder/Leadership: Kimi Lee
Bay Rising (BR) is a growing alliance between community-led organizations across the Bay Area. Their vision is of a healthier, more equitable society centered on grassroots organizing and social movements led by those most impacted — working-class people of color. Along with three local alliances that anchor Bay Rising — Oakland Rising, San Francisco Rising, and Silicon Valley Rising — and working in response to the mounting inequity and displacement occurring in the Bay Area, these organizations build political power that advances genuinely progressive policy solutions supporting healthy, equitable, and inclusive communities for all.
Collectively, BR represents tens of thousands of grassroots leaders of color. As BR grows beyond the core counties of Alameda, San Francisco, and Santa Clara, they are supporting emerging and existing base-building groups that represent communities of color and working class people through a network of alignment and mutual support throughout the nine Bay Area counties.
Beloved Communities Network

Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2021
Founders/leadership: Leila McCabe, executive director
The Beloved Communities Network (BCN) is a continuation of the years of work and wisdom that went into building the Transitions Initiative. As we continue on this journey of transitioning to a world of love, interdependence, and resilience, the Beloved Communities Network will build from the foundation that has been laid, while also strengthening, reinforcing, and designing new ways to leap into the world we imagine.
Beloved Community is not ours in conception. The concept is rooted in the legacy of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Grace Lee Boggs, and others, and is carried forward through many people investing in the idea that we can live in a world of economic and social justice. With the imagination we bring to this work, we envision a holistic approach that includes leading with bold vision and values, embodied practice, radical connection, and strategic navigation.
We know that now is a time of great transition and change. Around the globe we see unprecedented climate disruption and upheaval across economic, political, and cultural systems. We are all facing uncertainty and seeking paths to a future we can believe in. In this time we also feel a calling, an invitation, a possibility, beyond what we can presently see.
We have the capacity to answer this call. We have the capacity to bring forth a future that is kicking to be born. We have the capacity to be that future, to be the power and strength of our vision, our purpose, and our relationships.
Our communities are calling on us to recognize our undeniable interdependence and make a courageous commitment to love. Our mutual future depends on generating new solutions that reflect this recognition and commitment.
This is the calling of the Beloved Communities Network.

Leila McCabe
Leila (she/her), executive director of the Beloved Communities Network and founder of JoyLabs, is a mama, artist, strategist, movement maker, and builder. She brings over 15 years of experience in community and campus organizing, electoral organizing, movement building, and facilitation. She is dedicated to creating spaces for deep and authentic relationships to emerge across diverse constituencies and coalitions.
In 2010, Leila was a founding member of the successful minimum wage campaign in San Jose, California that helped kick-start the national minimum wage movement. In the 2012 election cycle, Leila led a team of 20 people to register 14,000 new voters in Santa Clara County going on to be the deputy field director for a progressive mayoral candidate in San Jose, the 10th largest city in the country. She has also worked in many nonprofit organizations and partnered with multiple colleges, churches, community members, and other organizations in developing curriculum and facilitating workshops.
Leila completed a certificate in leadership and social change at DeAnza College and Bachelor’s in sociology with a concentration in community change from San Jose State University. She is currently studying to complete her certificate as a certified personal trainer from the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
In 2021, Leila founded JoyLabs, a space where physical movement meets emotional resilience in a beloved community. JoyLabs trains the resistance through embodied resistance training.
Leila lives in Oakland California with her husband Calvin and son Malik. She serves on the advisory board to In Lak’ech dance academy and, to bring balance and healing to her life, Leila trains capoeira, lifts weights, and dances.
BIG We Foundation
Location: California; Louisiana; Tennessee
Region: National
Founding: 2018
Founders/leadership: Anasa Troutman, project director, founder
BIG We Foundation (BWF) unleashes the social imagination of those who often go unheard, and supports building a world reimagined from their point of view. It cultivates economic and cultural drivers grounded in Black imagination to foster a culture of belonging for everyone. By following the vision and leadership of those who live in or come from historically undermined communities, BWF values are their north star, guiding them on the journey of embodying the culture shift we are working to create in the world. BWF does its part to generate a thriving culture and healthy communities, where we can all experience sustained safety, joy, abundance, and love.
BIG We Foundation is a nonprofit arts and culture intermediary built to provide infrastructure and opportunity for high potential, under-resourced communities. The organization employs a culture shift model that leverages storytelling, community building, and real world implementation. It expresses a commitment to co-creating the future by investing in people and communities aligned with and working towards a shared vision. BWF priority areas — womxn and girls, wellness equity, and restorative economics — are designed to work together in Black, Indigenous, and other BIPOC communities, forming a fully integrated, narrative-based, and holistic approach to their work.