Location:  Las Vegas, NV
Region: Nevada
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.

Read more about Tansy McNulty, founder and CEO of 1M4, and the launch of 988 on the Move Blog.

Catch up a year after the launch of 988 with Tansy McNulty on the Move Blog.

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.

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.

Location: Berkeley, CA
Region: United States
Founding: 2013
Founders/leadership: Ozawa Bineshi Alber, co-executive director; Monica Atkins, co-executive director; Marion Gee, co-excecutive director

The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) is rooted in the cultural wisdom of Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, and working-class white communities throughout the United States. CJA unites frontline communities and organizations into a formidable force by applying the power of deep grassroots organizing to win local, regional, statewide, and national battles that work toward building a Just Transition. With decades of frontline wisdom and organizing, CJA members made local versions of the Green New Deal from New York City to Oregon, centering traditional ecological and cultural knowledge and creating pathways for a regenerative future. 

Formed in 2013, CJA emerged from a three-year process of grassroots groups and movement support organizations in the racial, environmental, and economic justice spaces working together for global climate justice. With the goal of aiding more than 100 million people, many living near toxic, climate polluting energy infrastructure, CJA centers racially oppressed and low-income communities — those who have suffered disproportionately from the impacts of pollution — through organizing, mass direct action, electoral work, cultural revival, and policy advocacy.  

CJA milestones include convening a climate justice assembly at the 2nd United States Social Forum in Detroit (2010) attended by 400 people representing over 118 organizations; sending movement delegations to the recent UN climate accord conferences (Copenhagen in 2010, Cancun in 2011, Durban in 2012); participating in the climate summit in Bolivia, which produced the Cochabamba Protocol; and the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit (2012). Most notably, the CJA joined 64 other organizations in 2019 for the Frontline Green New Deal Climate and Regenerative Economic Policy Summit. CJA Policy Fellow Kari Fulutron was a speaker along with Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and climate and housing advocates.

Location: Philadelphia, PA
Region: United States
Founding: 2016
Founders/leadership: Anthony Giancatarino, project director

The Just Community Energy Transition Project (JCET) catalyzes, convenes, and facilitates community-driven strategies and practices to build transformative alignment towards an anti-racist and regenerative economy, primarily through the lens of the energy economy and its transition.

Anthony Giancatarino has led JCET for the last three years, working with community partners to strive for antiracist practices and community-driven processes in policy development, strategy, and collective governance that advances energy democracy and a regenerative economy. 

Knowledge is power. JCET’s website offers a collection of resources to usher us into a Just Transition to build collective power. In partnership with insite collaborative communities, community-based organizations, academic institutions, and others, these resources can provide an understanding of where power comes from, how the electrical grid works, which can make a change, and how community visioning could create a more equitable and just energy system. Based in Philadelphia, PA, JCET works with community-based organizations, coalitions, and alliances to support policy strategies that advance energy democracy and climate justice. Regionally, JCET partners to build relationships across Pennsylvania and the Gulf of Mexico to challenge the terrible trifecta: an extractive energy economy, racism, and the urban-rural divide. Nationally, JCET collaborates with frontline national networks, alliances, and coalitions on various energy democracy and leadership projects. 

Location: Oakland, CA
Region: United States
Founding: 2009
Founders/leadership: Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, co-director; Dana Kawaoka-Chen, co-director

Justice Funders first emerged in 2009 as the Bay Area Justice Funders Network, as local funders sought spaces to unite the philanthropic community and front-line leaders following the murder of Oscar Grant by BART Police.

A partner and guide for reimagining philanthropic practices that advance a thriving and just world, Justice Funders fosters leadership development by supporting professional grantmakers and consulting with philanthropic institutions to reimagine how their organizations can operate as a justice funder. 

Justice Funders believes philanthropy must take an active role in building a world that redistributes wealth, democratizes power, and shifts economic control to communities. The organization is guided by the principles of Just Transition which support a shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy. 

Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2004
Founders/leadership: Zak Sinclair, founding director  

Movement Generation is rooted in vibrant social movements led by low-income communities and communities of color and committed to a Just Transition. Built out by a planning committee that included grassroots organizers, movement builders, and popular educators, Movement Generation’s concept intends to inspire and engage in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. 

During their first two years, Movement Generation was housed by the School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) and Movement Strategy Center. During that time, they brought together more than 70 young movement leaders from more than 30 organizations for two cycles of ten-month movement strategy discussions. Movement Generation has since engaged with over 150 organizations and thousands of change agents (community leaders, activists, and organizers) through intensive retreats, political education, hands-on skills workshops, peer exchange, campaign development, alliance building, and strategic support. 

Location: Oakland, CA
Region: California
Founding: 2006
Founders/Leadership: Liz Suk, Executive Director

Oakland Rising was founded in 2006 by the executive directors from APEN, Ella Baker Center, E-BASE, and Urban Habitat. They envisioned an alliance of organizations that aligned with their civic engagement work, collectively worked on electoral organizing, and strengthened the social justice movement in Oakland. By aligning regional like-minded forces, leading with values that center social justice, and flexing people’s power through mass-based electoral organizing, Oakland Rising works toward realizing shared dreams of health, happiness, safety, and opportunity for all. 

A multilingual, multiracial economic justice collaborative, Oakland Rising, is building the political power of working-class communities of color along with three local alliances: Bay Rising, San Francisco Rising, and Silicon Valley Rising. Together, in response to the mounting inequity and displacement occurring in the Bay Area, they work to build political power that advances genuinely progressive policy solutions supporting healthy, equitable, and inclusive communities for all. 

Together, the collaborative has won flagship policies at local and state levels that included a minimum wage increase; a tenant protection ordinance; a landmark jobs policy that featured living wages, local hires, and job access for workers with disadvantages, prior incarcerations, and other employment barriers; Prop 47, a state measure reallocating resources from incarceration to community-based re-entry services; and Proposition 30, a state measure that returned $6 billion to the state for critical services by raising taxes on the wealthiest Californians.

Oakland Rising remains committed and forward-thinking, ready to face new challenges supporting a thriving, progressive community in Oakland.

Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2014
Founders/leadership: Jess Clarke, project director & editor

Reimagine! (formerly RP&E) is the national journal of environmental and social justice, serving as an essential tool for building the movements for justice through reporting, analysis, and research. Incubated at MSC in 2014, the organization creates long-form, slow-media productions including in-depth reporting and immersive journalism. Highlighted works include two interviews conducted in collaboration with the California Environmental Justice Alliance on Central and Inland Valley residents choking on the pollution generated by Amazon’s ever-expanding warehouse operations; stories and interviews from the powerful women of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA); and multiple contributions from Kelly Curry, a fiercely independent food justice organizer from Oakland. Reimagine welcomes participation from writers and organizers committed to using a race, class, and gender analysis in their work. 

The Reimagine! Workers network provides production services and infrastructure capacity for community-based organizations creating movement media. Radio Reimagine hosts podcasts from Race, Poverty & the Environment (RP&E), NOOL — Weaving the Threads, and other allied producers. And, Reimagine!’s cataloged research papers cover topics like climate change, environmental justice, economic equality, and more. 

Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: November 2019
Founders/leadership: Priya Iyer, founder

Birthing people of color are twice as likely to experience perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMAD) compared to White women. One reason this problem persists is that the Western mental health model in the United States was not designed by and with BIPOC communities. Exacerbated by income, untreated PMADs cost $14 billion annually; and they affect not only the birthing parent but are passed down across three generations. 

Roots mission is to prevent postpartum mood disorders for BIPOC, low income birthing people, and build a legacy of generational mental wellness. Roots believe every birthing person, starting with BIPOC, low income communities in America, should have access to culturally reverent peer education and support around mental wellness during pregnancy and postpartum.

Roots’ mission is driven by domestic birth inequity, and a critical component of this is perinatal mental health. Roots use a text based adaptation of the Mothers and Babies curriculum. The tools and skills taught in this curriculum could prevent up to 50 percent of the episodes related to postpartum depression. 

The goal is to work with 120 BIPOC, low income birthing people in the next nine months by hiring and training three BIPOC peer support specialists and partnering with Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), for their initial pilot starting in April 2022.