For twenty-five years the Ella Baker Center has worked locally, statewide, and nationally to shift resources away from prisons and punishment and towards opportunities that make our communities safe, healthy, and strong. We believe that what you water grows. That’s why we mobilize everyday people to build power and prosperity in our communities.
Local | State | National
Local Campaigns:
We believe that budgets are moral documents, and we organize with allies to demand that elected officials enact budgets that reflect our values. Learn more about our County work.
- Healing Through Action: The Healing Through Action program will bring harmed families together into healing circles. These transformative circles will offer tools, modalities, and resources to begin a healing journey, which includes learning advocacy skills to lead the fight for justice.
- Restore Oakland: We have officially moved into our forever home at Restore Oakland in the Fruitvale! Restore Oakland is the first building with dedicated space to restorative justice and restorative economics.
State Policy:
We win policies that reduce sentences, remove barriers, and restore opportunities.
- Advocacy for legislation that abolishes abusive practices in prisons and jails, strengthens family connections, ends the economic burdens placed on people by mass incarceration, and reinvests in communities. Learn about our current bills.
- Inside/Outside Fellowship: is a new dual fellowship program designed to increase contributions to the Ella Baker Center’s policy work by people who are directly impacted by the policies we are advocating to change. It’s also an opportunity for directly impacted people to learn more about the criminal justice movement and the process for changing policies, while also receiving payment for their contributions and labor.
- Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families: Identified how to restructure sentences, reinvest resources, remove barriers, and restore opportunities for families and communities with Forward Together, Research Action Design, and 20 organizations across the country.
National Narrative Work:
We change the conversation about public safety to be less focused on fear and punishment, and more focused on having a living wage job, healthy food, and affordable childcare, healthcare, and housing.
- Night Out for Safety and Liberation: We bring people across the country together on the first Tuesday in August to redefine what #SafetyIs: dignity, opportunity, and power in our communities.