The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a strategy and action center working for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America. Based in Oakland, California, we promote positive alternatives to violence and incarceration through our four cutting-edge campaigns.
The Problem
Decades of disinvestment in our cities have led to despair and hopelessness. For poor communities and communities of color it's even worse, as excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration have left people even further behind. We now face a cycle of violence that makes everyone less safe.
The Solution
We need to break the cycle of violence and reinvest in our cities. Ella Baker Center offers smart solutions and uplifting alternatives to violence and incarceration.
The safest neighborhoods aren’t the ones with the most prisons and the most police. They’re the ones with the best schools, the cleanest environment, and the most opportunities for young people and working people. That’s what we want for urban America: justice in the system; opportunity in our cities; and peace on our streets.
Our Campaigns
Those three ideas — justice, peace and opportunity — guide all of our work at Ella Baker Center. They are the foundation of our four campaigns and initiatives:
Books Not Bars Campaigning to reform California's abusive & costly youth prison system.
Green-Collar Jobs Campaign Creating opportunities in the "green" economy for poor communities and communities of color.
Soul of the City works to transform Oakland into a socially just, spiritually connected,
ecologically sustainable city with shared prosperity for all.
Heal the Streets is a ten-month fellowship program that will train Oakland's young leaders
(ages 15 - 18) to develop and advocate for policies that bring peace
and hope to our streets.
We use a mix of tactics to accomplish our mission, from grassroots organizing, direct action and media advocacy to public education, policy reform and legal service. This has earned us a reputation for tenacity and innovation. But more importantly, it has earned victory after victory for our campaigns:
- We spearheaded the effort to defeat Prop. 6, which would have spent billions on prison building and thrown more young people into adult prison.
- We organized the City of Oakland, business and training centers to launch the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, which trains local residents for employment in the burgeoning green economy.
- We've sponsored -- and enacted -- multiple bills to help families stay connected to their young people while they're locked in youth prisons.
- We
launched a pioneering campaign to transform the California Division of
Juvenile Justice. The campaign has won critical reforms, including the closure in July 2008 of two of the most abusive youth prisons.
- We built California's first-ever support and advocacy network for families of incarcerated youth.
- We got the San Francisco Police Department to fire Marc Andaya, a brutal "cowboy" cop who beat, stomped and pepper-sprayed an unarmed black man named Aaron William to death.
- We derailed plans to build a massive "super-jail" for youth. For two years, we led a "strange-bedfellows" coalition of
urban youth and suburban homeowners in a campaign to stop Alameda
County's plans to build what would have been one of the biggest
juvenile halls in the country — at a time when juvenile crime was
steadily falling.
- We won the dismissal of violent, abusive guards in one of California's youth prisons.
- We secured the release of two wrongly-convicted Latino youth, through a mix of advocacy and strategic media that placed the case on 60 Minutes.
We are proud of what we've accomplished, but none of it would have
been possible without our supporters. Please join the Ella Baker
Center Action Network and help us build justice, opportunity and peace
for everyone.
