Speaking Truth to Power: Grassroots Solutions to Advance Justice
Authors: Joi Edwards, Manager of Storytelling and Insights
When it comes to advancing justice and fostering a resilient multiracial democracy, investing in grassroots organizations is a political and economic imperative.
We invited three grassroots organizations from our 2024 Accelerator Cohort to share how they’re organizing communities on the cusp of change.
The panel was hosted by Common Future’s first-ever Futurist-In-Residence, Trevor Smith, Co-Founder of The Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty (BLIS) Collective. Trevor was joined by Anna Delia Espino, Director of the Grassroots Organizing School of Alabama (GOSA), Frida Ballard of Worker Justice Wisconsin, and Andrea Chiriboga-Flor, Executive Director of Justice For the People Legal Center.
We gathered insights from panelists that detail how community-led initiatives, healing justice, and multi-year funding, are the areas where grassroots organizations need support most.
The Grassroots Organizing School of Alabama (GOSA) is working to replenish local organizing power.
Once a groundswell for justice organizing, Alabama became an organizing desert after the decades of “whitelash” that followed racial progress. For Ana Delia, investing in grassroots leaders is as much about meeting their needs as the needs of the community they’re serving.
“Through our workshops or the organizing school, we've been able to partner with different organizations state-wide. In our two cohorts, we've reached over 30 participants who have gone on to find their niche, ranging from immigrant rights to environmental justice to health access and equity, Medicaid expansion, and many issues that we face in the state of Alabama.”
—Ana Delia Espino
Worker Justice Wisconsin is an organization closing the union membership gap among immigrant workers in Madison and Dane County through empowerment and education. There, Frida leads cooperative incubation, bridging the gap between entrepreneurship and direct action.
Justice For the People Legal Center, says Executive Director Andrea Chiriboga-Flor, is one of the first organizer-led movement legal centers for housing and land justice in Colorado.
Justice For the People educates, trains, and organizes alongside impact litigation and enforcement to advance economic justice state-wide.
Building Power From the Ground Up
Multiple years of compounding civic and social crises have created sizable complexity in the
narrative and policy landscape, especially for grassroots leaders working overtime to advance change.
For Justice For the People Legal Center, this year’s wins have been a decade in the making. Subjected to exclusionary policies and predatory systems that undermine the collective power they possess, immigrant communities are targeted using the master’s tools. Immigration status can make mainstream loans or publicly subsidized housing largely inaccessible. Because of their affordability, Andrea shared how mobile homes in Colorado have become an important housing source for immigrant families within the last decade. So in 2014, when two mobile home parks shut down in a mostly immigrant neighborhood in Denver, Andrea says it catalyzed their housing justice movement.
“We saw parks, mobile home parks, shut down. We saw cities actively displacing people, or basically marking these parks for future development. A lot of cities were pretty hostile towards mobile home parks in general, and it was because of organizing efforts, lawsuits, and policy changes that things the landscape really started to shift, and we needed to educate our elected officials and city staff about that. You know, mobile homes are not mobile. That's a complete misnomer.”—Andrea Chiriboga-Flor
On April 30th, 2024 in the same neighborhood, the community closed on a mobile home park which will become the first resident-owned community in Denver. It will experience interim non-profit ownership for about 3 years until the residents can take over
After what Andrea says was a “decade of struggle”, this progress is a testament to the resilience of the residents who fought for it, spending years in court and demanding better from their state and city leadership. Andrea shared how these collective efforts helped to achieve one of the strongest Opportunity Purchase Laws in the country.
Worker Justice Wisconsin has also made major strides for workers. As the only worker center in the entire state, they are redefining how small nonprofits can win policies that shift more power to the people.
The Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement policy, a memorandum between Homeland Security and the Department of Labor, provides work permits to undocumented workers facing retaliation for filing complaints against their employers. This policy not only helps level the playing field for immigrant workers but for every worker.
“If they file with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), they're organizing through that agency, so it's a collective effort. The entire workforce gets that protection—even if one person files. Other organizations have been using this to protect entire factories, food processing plants, and auto plants all over the United States.”
—Frida Ballard
For the Grassroots Organizing School of Alabama, finding common ground to advance the common good has been the key to their success. Whether it’s organizing wins against anti-immigrant policies, or aligning their advocacy efforts with funders, GOSA’s alliances with unlikely partners have helped them move the needle.
A Shifting Landscape Needs Flexible Support
Flexible funding, multi-year support, and multilateral collaboration among organizations can help ensure long-term impact and systemic change.
Flexible Funding
- To sustain momentum for the growth of community power, choice, and ownership, we must move capital with the flexibility to support it.
- Unrestricted capital gives leaders room to breathe, ensuring that funding flows where communities need it most. Flexible funding can help leaders avoid burnout. Dre emphasizes the importance of community-led decision-making in choosing tactics and strategies for organizing.
Tailored Support
- Investing in solutions that equip leaders with tools to navigate complex organizational terrain—such as conflict resolution, navigating diverse identities, and setting healthy boundaries—can make all the difference.
- Grassroots leaders need the freedom to make decisions about how to catalyze that funding so they can carry out their mission.
- To secure a hopeful future where everyone has the opportunity to thrive, philanthropy can support us by embracing the waves of change and help us meet this moment with the urgency our democracy demands.
