A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to implement change at the local, regional, national, or international levels. Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision-making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures.
Critical Resistance is a U.S. based organization with the stated goal of dismantling what it calls the prison-industrial complex (PIC). Critical Resistance's national office is in Oakland, California, with three additional chapters in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon.
The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) is a legal aid organization based in New York City at the Miss Major-Jay Toole Building for Social Justice that serves low-income or people of color who are transgender, intersex and/or gender non-conforming. The organization was formed in August 2002 by attorney and transgender civil rights activist, Dean Spade. The project was named for Sylvia Rivera, a transgender activist and veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, who died the same year that SRLP was formed.
RESYST is an organization that was started in the San Francisco Bay Area by Amy Sonnie and yk hong in 2000 in conjunction with the release of Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology (ISBN 1555835589) edited by Amy Sonnie.
Colorlines is a digital media platform that seeks to build a political home for everyday people and activists. The platform creates accessible multimedia to power its vision of a just multiracial democracy where all thrive.
The United States Social Forum is an ongoing series of gatherings of social justice activists in the United States which grew out of the World Social Forum process, bringing together activists, organizers, people of color, working people, poor people, and indigenous people from across the United States. Its purpose is to build unity around common goals of social justice, build ties between organizations at the event, and help build a broader social justice movement. Planning for the first event was spearheaded by the organization Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, and involved dozens of other organizations around the United States. The Forum defines itself as "a movement-building process. It is not a conference but it is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis. The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and changes history."
The Audre Lorde Project is a Brooklyn, New York–based organization for LGBT people of color. The organization concentrates on community organizing and radical nonviolent activism around progressive issues within New York City, especially relating to LGBT communities, AIDS and HIV activism, pro-immigrant activism, prison reform and organizing among youth of color. It is named for the lesbian-feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde and was founded in 1994.
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a non-profit strategy and action center based in Oakland, California. The stated aim of the center is to work for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America. It is named for Ella Baker, a twentieth-century activist and civil rights leader originally from Virginia and North Carolina.
Community Change, formerly the Center for Community Change (CCC), is a progressive community organizing group active in the United States. It was founded in 1968 in response to civil rights concerns of the 1960s and to honor Robert F. Kennedy. The organization's stated mission is "to build the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to change their communities and public policies for the better."
Benjamin Franklin Chavis Jr. is an African-American activist, author, journalist, and the current president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. He serves as national co-chair for the political organization No Labels.
Open Communities (formerly Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs) is a nonprofit organization that advocates for fair and affordable housing in 17 northern suburbs of Chicago. Open Communities' mission is to educate, advocate, and organize to promote just and inclusive communities in north suburban Chicago. Open Communities works with current and prospective residents and local groups to promote economically and culturally diverse communities. Free services include fair and affordable housing counseling services, community education, advocacy, and organizing for welcoming communities.
The Thomas Merton Center is a non-profit grassroots organization in Pittsburgh whose mission to build and support collaborative movements that empower marginalized populations to advance collective liberation from oppressive systems.
Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA) is a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that mobilizes the Jewish community of the region to advance racial and economic justice. JCUA partners with diverse community groups across the city and state to combat racism, antisemitism, poverty and other forms of systemic oppression, through grassroots community organizing, youth education programs, and community development.
The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is a coalition of indigenous, grassroots environmental justice activists, primarily based in the United States. Group members have represented Native American concerns at international events such as the United Nations Climate Change conferences in Copenhagen (2009) and Paris (2016). IEN organizes an annual conference to discuss proposed goals and projects for the coming year; each year the conference is held in a different indigenous nation. The network emphasizes environmental protection as a form of spiritual activism. IEN received attention in the news as a major organizer of the fight against the Keystone Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), previously known as Citizens for a Better Environment, is a policy-focused non-profit organization started in 1971 by Marc Anderson and David Come in Chicago, Illinois. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, CBE expanded to California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. CBE established itself in San Francisco in 1978 and expanded to Los Angeles in 1982. Today, CBE is based in Oakland, CA and Huntington Park, CA, effecting positive change in communities throughout California, including Richmond, East Oakland, Vernon, Huntington Park, Boyle Heights, Pacoima, Wilmington, and SE Los Angeles. CBE was the first environmental organization to practice door-to-door canvassing by directly involving community members. In 1980, CBE won the United States Supreme Court decision on Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment 444 U.S. 620, protecting the 1st and 14th Amendment Rights of door-to-door activists with CBE and countless other public interest organizations. CBE's early combination of grassroots organizing with research and legal work provided the innovative edge needed to challenge large-scale industries and refineries, and government policies.
Race Forward is a nonprofit racial justice organization with offices in Oakland, California, and New York City. It defines its mission as "[helping] people take effective action toward racial equity."
Joanne Ninive Smith is a first-generation Haitian-American social worker and activist born and raised in New York City. She is the executive director and founder of the Brooklyn-based non-profit organization, Girls for Gender Equity. Smith has organized around the issues of gender equality, racial justice, school pushout, sexual harassment, police brutality, the criminalization of black girls in schools and violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people of color.
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a coalition of more than 50 groups representing the interests of black communities across the United States. Members include the Black Lives Matter Network, the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. They are endorsed by groups such as Color of Change, Race Forward, Brooklyn Movement Center, PolicyLink, Million Women March Cleveland, and ONE DC, and the coalition receives communications and tactical support from an organization named Blackbird.
Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide is a non-profit organization based in Atlanta, Georgia that incorporates sociological research into education and organizing projects. Project South focuses on developing activist strategies in response to social issues in the Southern region of the United States. The organization was founded in 1986 by Jerome Scott and Walda Katz-Fishman.
Rev. Trinity Ordoña is a lesbian Filipino-American college teacher, activist, community organizer, and ordained minister currently residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is notable for her grassroots work on intersectional social justice. Her activism includes issues of voice and visibility for Asian/Pacific gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals and their families, Lesbians of color, and survivors of sexual abuse. Her works include her dissertation Coming Out Together: an ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander queer women's and transgendered people's movement of San Francisco, as well as various interviews and articles published in anthologies like Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity and Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology. She co-founded Asian and Pacific Islander Family Pride (APIFP), which "[sustains] support networks for API families with members who are LGBTQ," founded Healing for Change, "a CCSF student organization that sponsors campus-community healing events directed to survivors of violence and abuse," and is currently an instructor in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Department at City College of San Francisco.
