Gender Justice LA

Gender Justice LA (GJLA) is a 10-year old non-profit organization working to elevate the collective power of the Los Angeles transgender community, with the end goal of eliminating gender-based oppression. They are building a strong grassroots organization that changes policies and legislation, hold elected officials accountable and secures funding for programs and services that improve the lives of trans people.

Human Rights Defense Center

The Human Rights Defense Center (Brattleboro, VT) advocates on behalf of the human rights of those detained against their will by the United States government and its agents. This includes people in state and federal prisons, jails, immigration detention, civil commitment, American Indian Jails, juvenile and military prisons among others.

People’s Production House

People’s Production House (New York, NY) is a media arts and journalism institute that pairs artists and journalists with low-wage workers, immigrants, and young people to produce ground-breaking stories presented to a general audience through cultural venues (museums, festivals) and diverse media outlets (The Nation, The New York Times, BBC, PBS Newshour, Australian Broadcast Corporation, NPR, and more). They’re partnering with Domestic Workers United and the Media Literacy Project in New Mexico.

Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Coalition

Jordan/Rustin Coalition (Los Angeles, CA) is a non-profit advocacy organization created in response to the lack of outreach to African Americans in the campaign against Proposition 22, the anti-gay marriage initiative in 2000.

Seattle Young People’s Project

The Seattle Young People’s Project (WA) is a youth-led, adult supported social justice organization that empowers youth (ages 13-18) to express themselves and to take action on the issues that affect their lives. Society continually blames youth for dropping out, running away, gang violence, and other issues, but does not address their roots causes nor allow youth to participate in the problem solving. SYPP supports young people to build their power as agents of positive change in their communities through grassroots organizing.

University Sin Fronteras

The University Sin Fronteras (San Antonio, TX) was born from the movement building work of Southwest Workers Union, a twenty-three year old grassroots membership based social movement organizing for environmental and climate justice, low-income worker and migrant organizing, community civic engagement and youth organizing and leadership development through political and popular education.

Fort Hood Support Network

The Fort Hood Support Network (FHSN) operates an outreach center called Under the Hood in Killeen, Texas near Fort Hood. The soldiers at Fort Hood (Texas), the nation’s largest military base, have been deployed repeatedly and their struggles with addiction, violence and suicide are ignored and understated by most institutions and the media. Under the Hood creates opportunities for fellowship and dialog through a coffeehouse, community events, leadership development, political education, and storytelling as a vehicle for healing and transformative organizing.

Worker’s Dignity Project

The Workers’ Dignity Project (Nashville, TN) is a worker-led workers’ center acting collectively for economic justice. The were founded on the belief in the dignity and respect of all people.

The Urban EpiCenter

The Urban EpiCenter (Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee) is an African-American-led grassroots organization that organizes and develops cross-cultural leadership throughout economically disadvantaged communities in middle Tennessee. Founded in 2007, Urban EpiCenter focuses on people not affiliated with the three traditional centers of power within the African-American community – Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the Black church or historic civil rights institutions.

Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless

The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (OH) is a unified social action agency, fully committed to its ultimate goal: the eradication of homelessness with respect for the dignity and diversity of its membership, the homeless and the community. The Coalition works towards this goal by coordinating services, educating the public, and engaging in grassroots organizing and advocacy.

Pan Left Productions

Pan Left Productions (Tucson, AZ) is a membership-driven collective of progressive artists and activists who believe in the positive use of media for social and environmental justice and social change. Their mission is to amplify progressive stories and voices by providing access to equipment and resources, increasing the capability of individuals and organizations to use and make media, and promoting equity in media distribution.

Arizona Interfaith Alliance for Worker Justice

As Arizona’s only worker rights center, AIAWJ (Phoenix, AZ) is a place where Arizona’s working women and men are able to take charge of solving their own workplace issues. Many of these same individuals have emerged as the center’s strongest worker leaders, board members, volunteers, and staff.

Action Resources International

Action Resources International (Laramie, WY) is an organization dedicated to serving victims and survivors of sexual violence, with a special focus on women and girls who have survived family-based and sexual violence and gone on to become anti-violence activists. Action…

On Coal River, a film by Adams Wood and Francine Cavanaugh

On Coal River takes viewers on a gripping emotional journey into the Coal River Valley of West Virginia — a community surrounded by lush mountains and a looming toxic threat. The film follows a former coal miner and his neighbors in a David-and-Goliath struggle for the future of their valley, their children, and life as they know it.

Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit, a film by Gilbert Ndahayo

In 1994, Gilbert Ndahayo hid to survive Rwanda’s days of genocide only to return to his childhood home to find it destroyed, his parents killed, and their corpses dumped, along with 153 bodies of his neighbors, in a pit in his back garden where he played as a boy.

13 years later, Ndahayo focuses his camera and his compassion on his home in ruin, behind a convent where his neighbors had sought sanctuary. He records the quiet beauty of survivors, the haunting accounts of the nuns who witnessed the horrors, and a rare confession by one of the men who murdered his parents.

Emerge Massachusetts

Emerge Massachusetts is part of a national movement to address the under-representation of women in elected office at the local, state, and federal level. Although the network is only eight years old, there are Emerge affiliates in nine states: Arizona, California, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and Wisconsin.

Families for Freedom

Families for Freedom is a grassroots network of families with loved ones facing risks of deportation that works with detainees and advocates for immigration reform.

Chinese Staff and Workers Association

When a fellow employee was fired at the Saigon Grill because he was too old,  Jerry Wang took a stand. That got him fired, too.  Since then, Wang has come together with other Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA) members…

Center for Constitutional Rights

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR…

Sylvia Rivera Law Project, New York City

The small things in life that many people take for granted – like using a public restroom – can be a battleground for transgender people. The big struggles in life can be much much worse. A trans woman, who found herself placed in a men’s prison, faced various health risks and constant sexual harassment. She was left with no options and very few rights.

Minustah vole kabrit, a Film by Rachel Smith and Leslie Norville

This is a story about Haiti in the years preceding the January 12, 2010 earthquake. It is also a story about outsiders, told from the point of view of the filmmaker, Rachel Smith, an outsider who goes to Haiti with a video camera. The film follows Enock, elected president of a community organization in the slum of Cite Soleil, as he seeks development aid for his neighborhood – an area infamous for gang violence. Meanwhile, it shadows two United Nations peacekeepers – Chris (an American officer), and Marcos (a Brazilian soldier) – as they work within the mission, toward its mandate for security and stability in Haiti. Gradually, the local politics and codes of behavior between peacekeepers and locals become more complex. The film asks: Can peace exist in the midst of poverty? At what point does an outsider understand the nuances of a place enough to help? January 12, 2010, the earthquake hits, devastating a country already in crisis. The filmmaker returns to the UN and to Cite Soleil.

Economies of Incarceration

A Radio Program by Sylvia Ryerson

The number of people incarcerated in the state of Kentucky has increased by approximately 750% since 1974, growing from 3,000 to 22,500 inmates. As shocking as these numbers are, they reflect a nationwide phenomenon. The United States today has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with approximately 1 and one quarter million people behind bars today. Such staggering statistics have created what is often referred to as “the prison development boom.” Since the 1980s, as skyrocketing rates of incarceration have continued to fuel the demand for prison construction, it has become widely accepted knowledge that building prisons in economically depressed regions will help promote broad-scale economic growth. Many of these new prison sites are in rural communities. Approximately one quarter of all rural prison construction nation-wide has been concentrated in four regions: The West Texas Plains, the Mississippi delta, south central Georgia, and here in the southern coalfield region of Appalachia.

The Irritable Heart, a film by Richard Poller

Leo Rising Productions is proud to present The Irritable Heart – The Story of Sergeant Twiggs, a documentary film that chronicles one soldier’s struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and seeks to unravel the mysterious bond between two brothers that resulted in their bizarre and heartrending deaths.

The Irritable Heart goes beyond bare statistics as it explores the personal agony of a dedicated man and decorated soldier who was slowly consumed by the mental illness he developed in service to his country.

Donor-Advised Grantee: Interfaith Worker Justice

Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) is a network of people of faith that speaks about religious values as a way to educate, organize, and mobilize. IWJ works withing religious communities on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits, and conditions for workers, and give voice to workers, especially workers in low-wage jobs.