 | |
| Formation | 1999 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Penda Hair and Constance L. Rice |
| Type | Non-profit corporation |
| Purpose | Political advocacy |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
Region served | United States |
| Website | advancementproject |
The Advancement Project is a politically liberal American nonprofit organization that focuses on racial justice issues. [1] The organization has a national office in Washington, D.C., as well as a California-specific office based in Los Angeles. [2]
The Advancement Project was founded in 1999 by civil rights lawyers in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. [3]
The organization is made up of two offices: Advancement Project National Office (based in Washington, D.C.) and Advancement Project California. [2]
The executive director of the Advancement Project's national office is Judith Browne Dianis. [4] The executive director of the California-based office is John Kim. [5] The founding co-directors include Advancement Project co-founders Constance L. Rice, Stephen R. English, and Molly Munger. [5]
The Advancement Project National Office is known for its opposition to voter ID laws [6] [7] and advocates for automatic voting rights restoration for all felons. [8] [9] This includes working with Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), a Louisiana non-profit organization in 2017. [10] In 2018, the organization was also actively involved in the passage of Amendment 4 in Florida, which restores voting rights to most ex-felons. [11] The Advancement Project also works with the non-partisan VoteRiders [12] organization to spread state-specific information on voter ID requirements.
The Advancement Project National Office also advocates for an end to school disciplinary measures which it believes disproportionately put minority children into a school-to-prison pipeline. [13] [14] In 2018, the organization's national office partnered with the Alliance for Educational Justice and released a national report on the state and impact of police presence in schools. [15] [16]
The organization has taken part in Moral Mondays protests, which are liberal demonstrations against Republican public policies. [17] [18]
In 2019, Ben & Jerry's partnered with the Advancement Project on a campaign focused on criminal justice reform. [19] [20] The campaign included efforts to shut down a St. Louis jail, Workhouse, and other similar jails. [19]
In 2017, Advancement Project California launched RACE COUNTS which surveyed California's counties to rank them according to racial disparity. The disparities were measured based on economic opportunity, healthcare access, education, housing, democracy, crime and justice, and environment. [21] Marin and Imperial County were ranked highest for racial disparity. [22]
In 2019, the organization reported on the lack of child care facilities in the state. [23] In April 2020, the organization advocated for a pause on permanent California school closings during the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization identified the schools at risk of permanent closure within the most densely populated counties in California. [24] The organization also asked the state to invest in communities impacted by COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders based on children who do not have access to early education or child care. [25]
In May 2020, the organization released a policy brief showing the disproportionate number of COVID-19 cases between Black or Latino residents and white residents in Los Angeles County. [26] The policy brief also showed that communities with higher poverty rates had more COVID-19 cases than wealthier communities. [26] [27]
Both Advancement Project's National Office in Washington, D.C. and Advancement Project California are governed by a 16-member board of directors. [28] As of 2019, the board included Bill Lann Lee, Joe Alvarez, Arlene Holt Baker, Harry Belafonte, Stephen R. English, Rinku Sen, Helen Kim, Daniel Leon-Davis, Ash-Lee Henderson, Alberto Retana, Barrett S. Litt, Molly Munger, Katherine Peck, Constance L. Rice, Tom Unterman, and Jesse Williams. [4] [5] In 2023, the board was composed of Arlene Holt Baker, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Bill Lann Lee, Daniel Alejandro Leon-Davis, Jesse Williams, Joe Alvarez, Monica Clark, Nat Chioke Williams, Franita Tolson, Stephen R. English, Thomasina Williams, and Uzoma Nkwonta. [29]
FairVote is a 501(c)(3) organization and lobbying group in the United States. It was founded in 1992 as Citizens for Proportional Representation to support the implementation of proportional representation in American elections. Its focus changed over time to emphasize instant-runoff voting (IRV), a national popular vote, and universal voter registration. It changed its name to the Center for Voting and Democracy in 1993 and to FairVote in 2004.
Maya Lakshmi Harris is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer. Harris was one of three senior policy advisors for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign's policy agenda and she also served as chair of the 2020 presidential campaign of her sister, Kamala Harris.
Electoral reform in California refers to efforts to change election and voting laws in the U.S. state of California.
The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) is an American non-profit organization which advocates for the legal rights of people with disabilities, based in Washington, D.C.
Marcella Nicholas Leach was an American victims' rights advocate based in Southern California and the mother of businessman Henry Nicholas. After the murder of her daughter, Marsalee (Marsy) Nicholas in 1983, she helped build Justice for Homicide Victims, one of California's early victims' rights organizations. Her late daughter is the namesake for Marsy's Law, the California Constitutional Amendment and Victims' Bill of Rights, which appeared on the November, 2008, ballot as Proposition 9.
The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is a conservative legal defense organization based in California. The group, founded by attorney Brad W. Dacus, describes itself as focusing on representation relating to "...religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties." PJI was declared an anti-LGBT hate group in 2014 by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to the group's long history of anti-LGBT rhetoric through its founder. The group also represents workers opposed to their employers' vaccine mandates.
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and subsection (b) of Section 4, which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance based on their histories of racial discrimination in voting.
The David Bohnett Foundation is a private foundation that gives grants to organizations that focus on its core giving areas – primarily Los Angeles area programs and LGBT rights in the United States, as well as leadership initiatives and voter education, gun violence prevention, and animal language research. It was founded by David Bohnett in 1999. As of 2022, the foundation has donated $125 million to nonprofit organizations and initiatives.
Penda D. Hair is an American lawyer. She is the Legal Director of Forward Justice, a law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South. A frequent television and radio commentator, she speaks regularly on issues of race and democracy. Previously, she was a founding co-director of the civil rights group Advancement Project.
In the United States, a person may have their voting rights suspended or withdrawn due to the conviction of a criminal offense. The actual class of crimes that results in disenfranchisement vary between jurisdictions, but most commonly classed as felonies, or may be based on a certain period of incarceration or other penalty. In some jurisdictions disfranchisement is permanent, while in others suffrage is restored after a person has served a sentence, or completed parole or probation. Felony disenfranchisement is one among the collateral consequences of criminal conviction and the loss of rights due to conviction for criminal offense. In 2016, 6.1 million individuals were disenfranchised on account of a conviction, 2.47% of voting-age citizens. As of October 2020, it was estimated that 5.1 million voting-age US citizens were disenfranchised for the 2020 presidential election on account of a felony conviction, 1 in 44 citizens. As suffrage rights are generally bestowed by state law, state felony disenfranchisement laws also apply to elections to federal offices.
Rights restoration is the process of restoring voting rights to people with prior felony convictions who lost their voting rights under felony disenfranchisement. It may also refer to additional civil rights that are taken away upon conviction, such as holding public office and serving on a jury.
Criminal justice reform seeks to address structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. Criminal justice reform can also address the collateral consequences of conviction, including disenfranchisement or lack of access to housing or employment, that may restrict the rights of individuals with criminal records.
Nanette Díaz Barragán is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for California's 44th congressional district since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she was a Hermosa Beach City councilmember from 2013 to 2015.
This is a timeline of voting rights in the United States, documenting when various groups in the country gained the right to vote or were disenfranchised.
Desmond Meade is a voting rights activist and Executive Director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. As chair of Floridians for a Fair Democracy, Meade led the successful effort to pass Florida Amendment 4, a 2018 state initiative that restored voting rights to over 1.4 million Floridians with previous felony convictions. In April 2019, Time magazine named Meade as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Meade's autobiography Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens was published in 2020; in 2021 he was awarded a MacArthur "Genius Grant."
Kristen M. Clarke is an American attorney who has served as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice since May 2021. Clarke previously served as president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She also managed the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office under Eric Schneiderman. In 2019, Clarke successfully represented Taylor Dumpson, the first African American woman student body president of American University, in her landmark case against white supremacists.
The 2020 California Proposition 17 is a ballot measure that appeared on the ballot in the 2020 California elections on November 3. Prop 17 amended the Constitution of California to allow people who are on parole to vote. Due to the passage of this proposition, more than 50,000 people in California who are currently on parole and have completed their prison sentence are now eligible to vote and to run for public office. This proposition also provides that all those on parole in the future will be allowed to vote and run for public office as well. The work of Proposition 17 comes out of a history of addressing felony disenfranchisement in the United States. California voters approved this measured by a margin of roughly 18 percentage points.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2023 is proposed voting rights legislation named after civil rights activist John Lewis. The bill would restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, most notably its requirement for states and jurisdictions with a history of voting rights violations to seek federal approval before enacting certain changes to their voting laws. The bill was written in response to the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, which struck down the system that was used to determine which jurisdictions were subject to that requirement.
Emma Greenman is an American politician who has served in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2021. A member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), Greenman represents District 63B, which includes parts of south Minneapolis in Hennepin County, Minnesota.
The League of Women Voters of California is a non-partisan organization that is part of the national League of Women Voters. Founded by Carrie Chapman Catt in the 1920s, The league was formed from the National American Women's Suffrage Association. Their stated goals are to encourage "informed and active participation in government," "increase understanding of major public policy issues," and influence "public policy through education and advocacy." The league has over 65 county groups within the state.
