Blue Heart
WHO WE FUND
Blue Heart exists to elevate the stories and fund the solutions of grassroots communities addressing today's most entrenched social challenges.
We channel funding from our members to grassroots partner organizations. In the Bay Area, we fund one organization each month, and in the Salish Sea we currently fund one per quarter.
Our model for choosing organizations to fund is relational. Our past partners nominate other grassroots organizations for us to fund, keeping power in the hands of people on the ground.
The leadership team of Peacock Rebellion
Staff members of Planting Justice
Cat Brooks & The Anti Police-Terror Project
We partner with organizations that:
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Build the political and cultural power of low-income communities and/or communities of color
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Use participatory, grassroots processes to achieve their goals
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Do work in the bioregions of our current chapters
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Are currently active, have an organizational structure, and have the capacity to put funding into immediate action
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Are recommended and/or vouched for by our existing partner organizations
Please note: Organizations do NOT need to be a registered 501c3.
We are always looking for new organizations to support. If you know of an organization that meets our criteria, please nominate them using the form below.
OUR PARTNERS
August 2023
The Hood Squad
In 2015, Tha Hood Squad was born out of the aftermath of Mario Woods' tragic murder at the hands of SFPD. With a desire to reclaim their own narrative, they initiated Tha Hood News, a news program dedicated to exposing police corruption and abuse. Over time, they expanded their outreach to tackle public health and safety issues with a specific focus on police accountability. Through documentation, advocacy, and protests, they hold law enforcement responsible for their actions and support affected individuals through the complex institutional processes.
September 2023
Safe Return goes beyond policy advocacy, focusing on healing, empowerment, and challenging systemic structures that perpetuate the incarceration cycle. Tamisha envisions the organization expanding its influence and deepening its community roots while ultimately aspiring for communities to achieve self-empowerment and connectedness, rendering structured interventions unnecessary.
July 2023
RooT envisions a ground-up movement that builds a culture of compassion, accountability, and consent. Through initiatives like the People's Healing Conference and Clinic, tailored healing workshops, and collective repair support, RooT offers opportunities for healing and growth to all individuals impacted by harm. RooT’s transformative journey requires collective support in dismantling systems of violence.
June 2023
Anti Police-Terror Project
In 2017, founder Cat Brooks shared invaluable insights into APTP's origin story, discussing the core principles that drive their work in addressing police violence and supporting affected communities. Since then, APTP has achieved remarkable milestones in combating police violence and promoting community empowerment. They have effectively facilitated critical investments towards racial repair and Black empowerment, embracing radical philanthropy as a powerful tool for change.
May 2023
April 2023
Silicon Valley De-Bug
San Jose-based De-Bug is both an advocacy group and a storytelling platform. Their innovative approach to community justice is founded on a multi-media strategy that explores the political, cultural, and social complexities of the Silicon Valley area through articles, videos, books, music, art, and design.
De-Bug utilizes a variety of community organizing strategies, such as direct action movements to change policies, healing circles to strengthen communal hope, and group tactics to channel collaborative aspiration. Through several artistic mediums like a bilingual magazine and multimedia website these strategies are all intended to strengthen the community by building upon the creativity and originality of the community they serve.
March 2023
Nestled in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco, the BCCC is a group of Latinx doulas who in 2018 delivered free supportive care to expecting families. At the height of the pandemic, in response to that need for free culturally competent care, they established as a nonprofit. Their mission is to improve access to quality care and deliver support services for low-income pregnant and postpartum mothers.
Their team consists of 47 trained doulas who administer culturally enriched (traditions of Guatemalan, Mexican, Salvadorian, Honduran, Colombian, and Nicaraguan) practices, gather maternity resources, and provide educational sessions for those in need of assistance. Not all doulas are trained in the same way; there are birth, postpartum, and fertility doulas, each focused on a particular stage of the birthing experience.
February 2023
Creating Freedom Movements
Founded in 2017, CFM conducts an 18 month program for visionary grassroots leaders to grow community, deepen cross-issue solidarity, and support them to sustain long term. They center those most impacted by multiple oppressions and provide leaders with the resources to help the sustainability and power of their work. Their efforts aim to strengthen the activist ecosystem, networks, and collaborations needed to grow collective power and build the cross-issue solidarity that is needed for deep societal transformation.
The program brings together social movement history, oppressive and exploitative system analysis, cultivating healing practices to help grassroots leaders stay grounded and connected to the work, the role of art in social change, and helps develop practical skills that will help leaders build alternatives to oppressive institutions.
January 2023
DRCC was established in 2001 to elevate the voices of those impacted by the Duwamish River pollution and other environmental injustices in South Duwamish land/Seattle, WA. They help prioritize community capacity and resiliency and fight for a healthy, clean, and equitable environment.
The Duwamish River was designated as one of the U.S’ most toxic hazardous waste sites. It’s located in South Seattle’s Duwamish Valley, a community with high levels of environmental health injustices. DRCC is an alliance of community residents, tribal members, small businesses, and environmental groups who are impacted and are taking action to address health equity and environmental justice in the community through organizing, advocacy, and fostering youth development. Through their work, they are elevating links between displacement, gentrification, climate change, and community power.
December 2022
Love and Justice in the Streets
Love and Justice works to meet the urgent needs of unhoused people and curbside communities in Oakland. They increase individuals’ capacity by first addressing their basic needs, in order for them to participate in grassroots organizing efforts to bring humane, just, and lasting solutions to the homelessness crisis.
LJIS is powered by an all volunteer team of three. They conduct rapid response efforts and visit encampments regularly to provide support and material resources (food, medical supplies, tents, etc), especially when unhoused neighbors face evictions and encampment demolitions. LJIS believes that the people most impacted by the issue should be central in organizing and policy conversations concerning homelessness.
October 2022
People's Programs
People’s Programs is dedicated to the liberation and unification of all African people. They build decolonization programs – programs that create self-determination in communities and help meet the material needs of people without ties to capitalistic systems. These programs, also known as survival programs, were popularized by the Black Panther Party.
The organization started their work five years ago with the start of People’s Breakfast Oakland, a breakfast program for houseless community members. After fostering deeper relationships with their community and understanding their needs, they developed programs in direct response to the feedback from their community in Oakland, including a mobile community health clinic, a legal support and bail program for Black protestors, and a people’s garden to help build food autonomy. All of their programs are guided by their community and created to reduce the community's dependence on capitalistic structures.
November 2022
Healing Clinic Collective
HCC is a political organizing project focused on generational healing. They work to restore the respect and relationship to ancestral forms of healing and wellness that are rooted in interconnectedness, expressions of love, cultural understanding, and a regenerative relationship between Earth and the people. HCC builds the power and capacity of communities by creating an infrastructure of holistic wellness that creates opportunities to witness, experience, share and teach others the experience of collective healing.
As part of their efforts to support communities in healing generational trauma, the project helps organizations, individuals, and community-based groups organize healing clinics for their community, where they provide free ancestral healing treatment. They also maintain a network of healers and wellness practitioners that are ethnically, culturally, and gender diverse - check out their practitioner directory.
September 2022
Native Action Network
NAN works to ensure Native women’s full representation, participation, and leadership in tribal, local, state, and national affairs. They mobilize generations of Native leaders to serve and help advance justice in their communities, while affirming Native identities and legacies. They’re uplifting the work of Native women, building their skills, and creating a power house network of advocacy leaders.
NAN is rooted in a community of more than 35,000 tribal members of the Seattle King County Native community. Their core programs include the Young Native Women’s Leadership Academy and Legacy of Leadership to build the leadership and advocacy skills of Native women in Duwamish land/Seattle and throughout the Pacific Northwest.
August 2023
ACE Makerspace
ACE was founded in 2011 to create an inclusive space for learning and solving. They bring together makers, craftspeople, hobbyists, entrepreneurs, programmers, creators, and hackers.
Growing from the deep history of social change that is the Bay Area, ACE is building a maker space for those that usually don’t have access to the tools and materials they need to build opportunity into their lives. From quilting ladies to small business owners to parents, ACE aims to create a place where people can create and systems of privilege are disrupted. ACE also centers an ethic of mutual aid. For example, their filter initiative created ~4,000 air filters last year to distribute and aims to increase their distribution this year. They see mutual aid as the operationalization of solidarity, where each person’s safety and wellbeing is dependent on each other.
July 2022
Community Kitchens was born from folks involved in food collaborating with folks involved in art. Maria Alderete and her husband shifted from running a restaurant to building a meal program at the beginning of the pandemic. They leveraged their restaurant following to support those that most needed food. Over 4,000 members of our Oakland community are unhoused and face food insecurity. They bring together more than 50 local restaurants and 10 community groups to create and distribute meals every day to unhoused, at-risk youth, and shut-in or low-income seniors. Community Kitchens has served over 50,000 meals to Oakland’s unhoused and shut-in seniors. They currently provide 10,000 meals a month.
Their work has evolved into local political organizing to get the county to provide better benefits and food support. A central pillar of their work is community building, recognizing that a meal is more than nourishment, it also builds community and collaboration.
June 2022
Freedom Community Clinic's purpose is to provide whole-person healing for Bay Area communities and build a new medical system that centers community healing modalities.
Check out our interview with Bernadette "Bernie" Lim, Founder at FCC, doctor by day and organizer by night. She started out with $500 to create pop-up community healing clinics to prioritize the healing of Black, brown, and immigrant communities. It’s not just about giving care, but also about legitimizing community healing modalities. They showed up at protests, with massage therapists and acupuncturists and herbalists coming out of the woodwork ensuring that Black and brown bodies could find rejuvenation and rest.
They now provide local community healing clinics at UC Berkeley and have two community healing centers in Berkeley and Oakland. They are now being asked by hospitals and clinics to provide healing to their staff. The majority of their support has come from the grassroots, with many, smaller donations demonstrating the community’s overwhelming support for this model.
May 2022
FEEST is a grassroots food justice organization in Seattle. FEEST’s base has over 85% reliance on free lunch programs and 90% BIPOC. In these communities it is much harder to transit and access affordable and healthy foods. FEEST started as a dinner program, building their base by cooking culturally significant meals at schools and igniting new imaginations about experimentation and relationship.
April 2022
Homies is a grassroots organization in East Oakland building youth power and nimbly responding to community needs. We also want to give a shout-out and welcome to all our new members recently! Particularly those joining our new Pacific Northwest chapter whose donations go to our quarterly PNW grassroots partners.
Homies Empowerment started out as an after-school program using an asset-based lens to work with gang-impacted youth. They mirror positive assets that typically attract youth to gangs: a sense of belonging, protection, rites of passage, and meeting basic needs. Their after-school program evolved to become a set of Ethnic Studies and Leadership courses offered throughout Oakland schools. They created Homies Dinners where youth across gang lines could eat together, which evolved into HECHOS (Homies Empowerment Community High for Our Success) a community school for youth who have been pushed out of traditional schools.
February 2022
BAY-Peace is a youth-led organization on a mission to support young people in transforming violence, particularly normalized and systemic violence.
One in four youth who come from neighborhoods in East and West Oakland, where 30% of the population lives in poverty, are incarcerated. BAY-Peace rallies youth around winning local political campaigns (No Coal in Oakland, Prop 57, etc.), gives paid opportunities to develop vocational skills, and provides a huge range of workshops for youth to understand and fight for their visions for a different world.
With a board of youth advisors and board of elders, BAY-Peace is constantly changing, responsive and flexible to the evolving political landscape and the growth of BAY-Peace youth leadership as artists.
March 2022
Urban Peace sees community violence as just a symptom of state violence, like poverty and hunger, and design their programs to address the root causes. They’ve been focused on breaking down the barriers in neighborhoods to further systems change work. Healing has been part of the model since the beginning, understanding that healing is at the root of creating cultural change, including the healing that happens through movement. Part of trauma is hopelessness, and organizing can be the healing antidote. They recognize healing and change is a long process and they invest in leaders and community to ensure they stay in movement for the long-haul.
Their Leaders in Training program works with high schoolers to change policy and release their creative expression. They are also expanding their base-building work in a number of communities, with leaders emerging that are excited to lead events, actions, and campaigns. Free Our Kids is working to confront the implications of probation in the county, both influencing current policies and shaping future ones.
December 2021
PKC creates accessible, healthy, and loving food spaces, such as their frequent celebration of the Black Panther Party with a free breakfast serving over 500 community members in Oakland in partnership with youth organizations. This year, to honor the 55th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, they hosted a conversation between Mila Terry-Koon and BPP alum Ericka Huggins about intergenerational activism and the legacy of the BPP survival programs.
January 2022
Queer the Land is a Seattle-based organization with a powerful vision for queer, transgender, and Two-Spirit Black/Indigenous/people of color (QT2BIPOC) collectively owning their land and labor. It was founded in 2016 by QT2BIPOC community-based organizations Building Autonomy and Safety for Everybody and the Queer & Trans Pan-African Exchange.
They are building a cooperative network, political home, and community center for working-class QT2BIPOC in the greater Seattle area, which would include both transitional and semi-permanent housing and an organizing space. Earlier this year they just acquired a 12-bedroom home in Seattle and will be starting to build their dream! Blue Heart is proud to support their vision and expanding grassroots power.
October 2021
Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network is an all volunteer-run effort on Duwamish land in the Seattle area to spread mutual support in the trans Black and Brown community. They work to make solidarity not just about embodying the values, but also the action.
Currently, they are raising money to buy an apartment building to provide affordable housing to the community. They worked last year and this year to grow Black pride in Seattle, specifically making safer spaces for trans Black and Brown folks during Pride. The Network is a project of love to continue a lineage of mutual aid, and weave community support with movement building.
November 2021
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an Indigenous women-led organization that collects a voluntary tax from Bay Area residents to purchase land to return to the Ohlone peopl. They are successfully rematriating the Bay Area, most recently with a house in East Oakland. Investing in land trusts is a way to rematriate land to Native people and to encourage Bay Area residents to reflect on their responsibility to local Native people. As a federally unrecognized tribe, the Ohlone have no reservations or protected land bases.
In the words of Corrina: “This land trust is a way for us as human beings to come back to being human beings. A way for us to learn how to treat each other with respect. A way for us to re-envision the Bay Area. We can create a healing for the people that are here. Not just the Ohlone people, but all people that exist on this land.”
September 2021
California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative started when a group of activists saw the horrific impact of nail salon products and practices on their workers, and have organized to win tangible improvements in the lives of those workers.
Nail salon workers - 78% of whom are low-income and the majority of whom are Asian immigrant women of reproductive age - are exposed to chemicals that cause cancer, reproductive harm, and asthma daily due to the products that they handle.
The Collaborative is winning worker protections and fostering the creation of “healthy salons” by educating and developing the leadership of workers, conducting research about health outcomes, advocating for more just policies at the state level, and raising public awareness. They passed AB-2125, which created a program within the Department of Toxic Substances Control to increase the number of salons adopting safer and better working conditions.
August 2021
Roots of Labor Birth Collective and Black Women Birthing Justice are two organizations in the Bay Area providing support to women of color, and trans and nonbinary folks, before, during and after childbirth.
Black women face significantly higher maternal mortality risk, across income and education levels, and Indigenous women face infant mortality rates at 1.6 times the rate of white women. Doulas are the most effective and culturally relevant intervention for this epidemic. Roots of Labor Birth Collective and Black Women Birthing Justice are creating transformative community-led solutions by providing doulas of color to birthing people (including incarcerated folks) and hosting doula trainings. Justice looks like ensuring that women and trans folks are empowered to make healthy decisions for themselves and their babies.
July 2021
The Self-Help Hunger Program (SHHP) was started by Aunti Frances, a long-time Oakland resident who has experienced houselessness and living in a shelter. She started giving warm, home-cooked meals to six homeless folks who were on her block, which then blossomed into a weekly community event. Aunti Frances and her small team of co-chefs carry on the tradition of the Black Panthers’ Free Meals program, using a portion of their own Social Security checks each month to provide hot meals for over 50 people each week rain or shine.
In the words of Aunti Frances: “We seek to provide any and all human services that an individual or family may need to, not merely survive, but to thrive. We don't just feed the homeless, we feed the hungry.”
April 2021
Source: Yakima Herald
Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia (Workers United for Justice) is a new union, of almost entirely Latinx women, for fruit warehouse workers in Yakima, Washington. In honor of the long history of organizing for worker rights, we are excited to lift up Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia as they fight for their dignity and livelihoods.
Just this last month, the union is continuing to put the company’s toes to the fire, with outcomes that might set new precedent for union organizing in the county. They are protesting the interference of Allan Bros, a fruit company, in their unionizing efforts. As the President of Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia, Agustin Lopez, stated, “We are organizing this union because we want to be treated with dignity and respect at work, because Allan Bros. needs to recognize that our lives and safety matter”.
May 2021
With a staff of just three youth, YUCA has moved mountains. Here are just a few of the remarkable wins (full list here):
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Won $20 million in Affordable Housing Funds for EPA in 2016, while creating a vanguard in Partnerships between Facebook and the EPA Community.
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Successfully passed three critical measures to protect renters and ensure an affordable city.
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Supported and trained over 150 low-income youth of color as core youth organizers and 650 low-income youth of color as members to become actively involved in community campaigns in East Palo Alto and the region.
June 2021
CCWP was founded in 1995 as an inside/outside collaboration among women and trans prisoners, former prisoners, and supporters. CCWP understands that racial and gender justice is central to the project of dismantling the prison industrial complex. This systemic analysis not only defines all movements for social change, but also informs how CCWP works in coalition. They understand that by working in movement ecosystems they can achieve bigger wins on policy, shifts in public narrative, and collective healing.
February 2021
Source: Banteay Srei
With only one full time staff member - Hamida Yusufzai - Banteay Srei is the leading voice against sex exploitation and trafficking in Oakland, particularly for Asian & Pacific Islander (API) women.
Oakland is a hot spot for sex trafficking, which disproportionately impacts API women. Banteay Srei provides a safe space, sex positive education, community building activities, and leadership development for API women to foster cultural pride and self-determination.
California is the top state for human trafficking, 74% of which is sex trafficking. Banteay Srei seeks to end trafficking by not just providing programs for women that have been impacted, but also building culturally-inclusive, educational, and empowering spaces for at-risk women so they aren’t impacted in the first place. For example, the Bong Srei leadership program (“older sister” in Khmer) trains alums to become youth leaders, providing intensive training throughout the academic year on topics from conflict mediation to health education.
March 2021
Acta Non Verba challenges oppressive dynamics and environments in Oakland through urban farming. A vibrant space for children and families to learn about and cultivate nutrition & healthy living, ANV works in communities where 99% of the students qualify for free and reduced school lunches and only 17% of Latinos and African Americans consume the recommended daily allowance of fruits and vegetables, because of lack of access to healthy food stores.
ANV runs a summer camp, an after school program, and a CSA program. All the money made from the CSA goes into a bank account to directly support the children that are participating in their programs.
January 2021
Health Justice Commons uses popular education to infuse a disability justice lens across our health systems - specifically to educate health providers and those most impacted about the failures of the medical industrial complex.
For example, HJC launched a national medical abuse hotline, which provides peer witness and support to those impacted, and also documents & exposes the pervasiveness of MIC abuses. HJC also runs six-week intensives on understanding and transforming the MIC, focusing on climate justice and disability justice as perpetuated by the MIC.
HJC is led by crip and chronically ill folks, is majority queer and BIPOC, and is all volunteer-run. The organizers use their experience to lead the work, and uplift the vision of health care workers owning their labor, centering healing within medicine, and uplifting alternative ways of restoring health.
November 2020
East Oakland Collective is working to ensure the deep roots of East Oakland stay safe, vibrant, and healthy. With just a team of three, East Oakland Collective is doing everything from feeding people and housing people, to reimagining local public policy from the ground up.
Materially, they provide farm to table produce boxes for unhoused and food insecure folks. In the first 45 days after shelter-in-place, they went from providing 400 to 4,000 meals every day to those that needed them. They’ve now been funded to provide emergency food and COVID-care kits to their community (delivered within 24 hours of a positive case).
In building long-term economic power, they created the East Oakland SuSu Lending Circle Program. The program offers individuals 0% interest savings loans with free monthly financial education to support participants in personal budgeting, debt management, first time home ownership, and small business incubation.
December 2020
Source: Hangar en Santurce
Hangar en Santurce is a grassroots group working in Puerto Rico. They are responding to the interlocking economic, political, and ecological crises of Puerto Rico by providing space for activists and organizers to plan and strategize. For example, El Mercado Queer is an underground economy that Hangar foments where small business folks can incubate and launch.
In founder Lale’s words: “Hangar is where we put into practice the idea that ‘Our bodies are our first political home’”. At its heart, Hangar is a space for folks to feel free. “We use our bodies, our liberties, and our art as tools”.
September 2020
Siembra is a Latinx organization in North Carolina supporting families impacted by ICE and organizing Latinx voters to elect pro-immigrant candidates. Grassroots organizations like Siembra need funding in this moment to not only build a powerful progressive wave at the ballot box this November, but also to ensure communities have the self-determined power they need to defend their rights no matter the candidate that wins.
In 2019, 110 of Siembra’s members across the state successfully pressured a veto of HB 370, which would have required sheriffs to work with ICE. They supported 59 families impacted by ICE detention and trained 340 people to ‘watch’ ICE in their neighborhoods. They won over $60,000 in back pay and damages for members in immigrant worker wage theft campaigns. And they knocked hundreds of Latinx voters’ doors in Durham to win the largest housing bond referendum in NC history, which will provide $95 million for affordable housing.
October 2020
Source: BAN
Black Abolitionist Network was started by a group of organizers in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, committed to developing abolitionists and defunding the Chicago Police Department.
Often Blue Heart supports grassroots organizations that have been organizing for years, or even decades. We are excited to support this relatively new formation, as seed funding for emerging grassroots organizations is critical for supporting vibrant and evolving movement ecosystems. BAN is founded by seasoned organizers that have stitched the network’s demands from the landscape of campaigns that have taken root across Chicago around police brutality and racial justice.
August 2020
Source: 67 Sueños
67 Sueños is an organization that organizes marginalized undocumented youth and youth from mixed status families affected by violence, mass incarceration, deportation, and poverty. 67 Sueños’ work centers on three pillars: political education of youth, truama healing, artivism (e.g., poetry/songwriting, murals, chalk art, banner/poster making, and guerilla theater), and ‘real life learning’ as young social justice ambassadors in the broader community.
Run by just two staff members, 67 Sueños was created because the majority of migrant youth were not being included in national debates about their future. They seek to uplift migrant youth voices and counteract toxic narratives about the criminalization of migrants. Check out their page of youth stories for powerful tales of artistry and youth activism.
July 2020
This month Blue Heart members are giving to APIENC and receiving a very special commissioned print created in collaboration by APIENC members Madhvi Trivedi-Patha and Kevin VQ Dam. Since the last time we partnered with APIENC, they’ve made a beautiful new website to paint their vision: check it out.
As a hub for leadership development, community building, the preservation of oral histories, and trans justice movement building, APIENC is a force building real power amongst trangender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary Asian and Pacific Islanders across the Bay Area.
June 2020
Source: Sins Invalid
May 2020
POOR Magazine is a poor people-led/Indigenous Peoples-led arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, art, education and advocacy to folks in poverty. POOR is a past partner of Blue Heart, and you can check out our stirring interview with POOR founder Tiny and fellow organizers Laure and Muteado from 2017.
POOR Magazine continues to advance their critical programming (check out the People Skool, The Homefulness Project, POOR Radio, and the Stolen Land tour), and they are also doing what they do best in the face of COVID-19: provide critical & strategic analysis for the movement left and their base of poor & Indigenous folks.
April 2020
Source: Black Organizing Project
Black Organizing Project (BOP) is a powerful Oakland-based group training up black organizers to fight the school-to-prison pipeline. As BOP says, “Policing in schools is a public health issue”. BOP is pushing the frontiers of community organizing, visioning safe communities, and evolving youth leadership. BOP cultivates the courage in black organizers to name that seemingly intractable future where their communities are free from oppression and terror. In a moment of global crisis, that vision, and the support of Black youth voices, has never been more important.
BOP has an impressive track record. They have won new policies and implemented programs for youth to think critically about topics like school pushout, criminalization of black and brown youth, capitalism, and slavery. They nourish black art and culture, such as their “OurStory” political education series on topics like black love, black art, and black history.
March 2020
When $4.6B was spent on media in the last election, and only $160M on organizing, it’s not hard to see why we still see a suite of wealthy white men making the decisions for our nation.
Mijente is one of the groups working to build the Latinx grassroots organizing base mobilizing for this election. Their decision to make their first political endorsement of the Bernie campaign is a signal of how important this election is for immigration policy and the liveability of the U.S. for communities of color. Don’t miss our interview with Mijente Director Marisa Franco for her dynamite analysis here.
“Organizing teaches us that no one is coming to save us. We transform ourselves in order to save ourselves, and each other.”
January 2020
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Youth Together is sounding that heartbeat by building the leadership and self-determination of multi-racial youth so they can shape their own educational systems. Check out their Theory of Change.
Youth Together has designed programs to specifically address the gaps youth see in their own schools. For example, their program FRESH (Freshman Retaining and Expanding Scholarly Habits) aims to close the transitioning gap between middle and high school so freshmen can kick off high school on the right foot. They also host internships, workshops, and on-campus youth centers for students and parents to learn how to organize in their schools around educational inequities. In a moment where youth are those painting more just visions for our country, we are honored to support a 24 year old organization that is building youth power for the long-haul.
February 2020
Source: BlackOUT Collective
BlackOUT is a ‘think and do shop’, that supports black-led organizations building campaigns that are interconnected, strategic, and innovative. They provide local, regional, and national trainings on direct action, and provide a hub for innovative strategic planning to support the Movement for Black Lives. They also help steward the Black Land and Liberation Initiative seeking to reclaim and secure land for black communities nationwide.
BlackOUT plays roles in each of the Movement for Black Lives organizing ‘tables’, helping advance their platform. They are also managing Ruckus Society, and making steps towards being both the structural hub and the ‘living example’ of liberation work.
November 2019
The UndocuFund provides direct funding to undocumented immigrants in Sonoma County and their families to help with fire-related expenses. Between October 2017 and December 2018, it raised and distributed roughly $6 million in direct assistance to almost 1,900 families whose lost homes, possessions and earnings in the fires.
Undocumented immigrants displaced by the climate-change-fueled disaster weren’t receiving support because they weren’t applying for aid out of fear of government crackdowns, were scared of being targeted in shelters or didn’t have needed identification for shelters, or couldn’t communicate with non-Spanish-speaking volunteers. On top of this, undocumented workers already have higher rates of occupational injuries and a higher prevalence of chronic disease, to complicate fire-related health impacts.
UndocuFund is currently raising funds to support those displaced by the 2019 fires in Sonoma County.
December 2019
Source: The Case Photography
PKC creates accessible, healthy, and loving food spaces, such as their frequent celebration of the Black Panther Party with a free breakfast serving over 500 community members in Oakland in partnership with youth organizations. Mirroring the Party, PKC understands we cannot shift our political ecology without being grounded in and materially serving the communities most impacted by the systems of oppression driving that ecology. In their words: “The goal of the People's Kitchen Collective is not only to fill our stomachs, but also nourish our souls, feed our minds, and fuel a movement.”
October 2019
Source: El/La
El/La is a grassroots organization led by and for transgender Latinas (TransLatinas), based in San Francisco. They support the survival and improve the quality of life of TransLatinas in the Bay Area. In their words: “We respond to those who see us as shameful, disposable or less than human. We are here to reflect the style and grace of our survival, and to make new paths for ourselves.” El/La emerged in 2006, and is based on 10 years of HIV prevention campaigning by the founding team. They continue to offer HIV prevention services for TransLatinas, as part of a larger holistic set of programs to support the mental, emotional, physical, sexual, and economic health of transgender Latina women.
August 2019
AgitArte
Source: AgitArte
AgitArte is an organization of working class artists and cultural organizers who create projects and practices of cultural solidarity with grassroots struggles against oppression, and propose alternatives that generate possibilities for transformations in our world. They initiate and lead community-based educational and arts programs, along with projects that agitate in the struggles for liberation.
September 2019
Source: Sins Invalid
Sins Invalid incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, particularly queer and gender-variant artists of color. They push normative paradigms by challenging what ‘normal’ and ‘sexy’ mean, painting an alternative picture of beauty and sexual inclusivity that our world desperately needs. They fearlessly explore sexuality on stage, presenting multidisciplinary performances from poetry to music, from drama to dance. They also offer political education workshops to organizations interested in deepening their analysis of and commitment to action on disability justice.
July 2019
Source: Kwai Lam
Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) is a community-based, all-volunteer organization offering culturally relevant activities for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Native Americans, and their families and friends. Two-Spirit refers to the shared understanding in Native American tribes that some individuals naturally possess both masculine and feminine spiritual qualities.
June 2019
BAY-Peace
Source: BAY-Peace
BAY-Peace is a youth-led organization on a mission to support young people in transforming violence, particularly the violence that we normalize and the violence that is systemic. One in four youth who come from neighborhoods in East and West Oakland, where 30% of the population lives in poverty, are incarcerated. BAY-Peace rallies youth around winning local political campaigns (No Coal in Oakland, Prop 57, etc.), gives paid opportunities to develop vocational skills, and provides arts and healing workshops for youth to understand and fight for their visions for a different world.
May 2019
Source: Marin Independent Journal
POOR Magazine, a poor people led/Indigenous Peoples-led arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, art, education and advocacy to folks in poverty. They are not just visibilizing poor people, they are creating a movement, an organizing model, and a new story for changing how poor people self-determine their futures that is being taken up across the country. Even though they do a lot (People Skool! The Homefulness Project! POOR Radio! Stolen Land tour!), this organization is mostly volunteer-run. Blue Heart supported POOR Magazine in 2018, in various events, and is thrilled to be partnering again this month.
March 2019
Source: Regenerate Nebraska
As RegeNErate says: “Everything comes from the soil — all that feeds us, nourishes us, provides us with strength and community. It’s who we are. Nebraskans know, as well as anyone, that soil is soul.” To share this principle, RegeNErate holds workshops and networks between farms to nurture a food system based on cooperatives, healthy food access, and carbon drawdown.
We are excited to be supporting ecological and social regeneration in the midwest!
April 2019
Peacock Rebellion
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Source: Peacock Rebellion
Peacock Rebellion is the only arts organization in the country led entirely by queer and trans people of color. They put on kickass comedy shows, provide a space for healing and creation in East Oakland, and spread a vision of social justice through their sassy art. Their major annual event, the Brouhaha Comedy Show, features a trans women of color comedy troupe (the only one in the country), attracts over 1,000 people, and has won national critical acclaim.
Most recently, Peacock Rebellion has been offering free Queer & Trans People of Color (QTPOC) yoga, providing weekly maker nights for the community, and hosting hackathons and careers days for queer and trans folks. Peacock is an example of an organization doing it all - rapid response and safety planning to mitigate the direct violence of our current political climate, nurturing resilience-based practices of healing and skill-building, and dreaming forward a movement for QTPOC liberation.
February 2019
Source: RLBC
Black women face significantly higher maternal mortality risk, across income and education levels, and Indigenous women face infant mortality rates at 1.6 times the rate of white women. Doulas are the most effective and culturally relevant intervention for this epidemic. Roots of Labor Birth Collective and Black Women Birthing Justice are creating transformative community-led solutions by providing doulas of color to birthing people (including incarcerated folks) and hosting doula trainings.
January 2019
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Source: APIENC
December 2018
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Source: Kevin Hume / SF Examiner
One of Greenaction’s recent health justice campaigns is about the 450 acre lot of the Bayview-Hunters Point Shipyard site. It was used for nuclear research until 1974 and then the San Francisco city government began re-developing the site and turn it into residential lots in the late 1990’s amid the tech boom, though over 90% of the soil on the site is in fact still contaminated.
Greenaction has been the foremost watchdog group for this contamination cover-up - without their grassroots education and organizing with residents, class action lawsuit, and persistent work to hold the Navy and City accountable, this likely would have stayed well under the rug. And thousands of primarily black and brown Bay Area residents would have continued to be exposed to toxic contaminants with no recourse. This is what organizing for environmental justice looks like.
October 2018
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Source: East Bay Express
The founders of IPOC, Johnella LaRose and Corrina Gould, have also launched the Sogorea Te Land Trust, which collects a voluntary tax from Bay Area residents to purchase land to return to the Ohlone people. Investing in land trusts is a way to repatriate land to Native people and to encourage Bay Area residents to reflect on their responsibility to local Native people.
November 2018
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Source: Woke Vote
Democrat Doug Jones upended Roy Moore and claimed a crucial Senate seat for Democrats. Woke Vote was the leading grassroots group responsible for his historic win. We are proud to support their work.
July 2018
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Source: One Step A La Vez
August 2018
Source: OPAL
They have won some amazing campaigns (low-income transit fare, a youth fare, public transit community oversight, among many others), and they have built a network that now serves as the hub for EJ power-building across the region.
September 2018
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Source: CIYJA
CIYJA was created and run by undocumented youth fiercely advocating for immigrant rights, the abolition of ICE, and youth power. In this political moment of borders being used to divide communities, white supremacy used to dehumanize entire peoples, and xenophobia used to tear families apart, it is critical that we support the grassroots organizations that have been and will be on the frontlines of transforming immigrant rights and the systems that uphold them.
Using a chapter-based model, CIYJA not only engages in building up the political analysis of undocumented youth, they also seek to shift the toxic “good immigrant vs bad immigrant” narrative that has perpetuated racism in the U.S.
June 2018
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Source: CHNSC
The Collaborative is winning worker protections and fostering the creation of “healthy salons” by educating and developing the leadership of workers, conducting research about health outcomes, advocating for more just policies, and raising public awareness. For example, for the 2016 the Collaborative called 4,300 households, knocked on 1,200 doors, and visited 170 nail salons, primarily serving the Vietnamese community.
May 2018
Source: Sins Invalid
April 2018
Community to Community
With a staff of only 3, C2C has built a powerful base of farmworkers fighting for the solutions that come straight from those most impacted, and that explicitly create participatory processes that will shift power over the long term.C2C works to change policy through building the power of farm worker unions and serves on a range of coalitions holding our corporatized and industrialized agricultural system accountable.
March 2018
Self-Help Hunger Program
The Self-Help Hunger Program was started by Aunti Frances, a long-time Oakland resident who has experienced “houselessness” and living in a shelter. She started giving warm, home-cooked meals to six homeless folks who were on her block, which then blossomed into a weekly community event. Aunti Frances and her small team of co-chefs carry on the tradition of the Black Panthers’ Free Meals program, using a portion of their own Social Security checks each month to provide hot meals for over 50 people each week rain or shine.
With the simple act of preparing and sharing nutritious food once a week, the Self-Help Hunger program has created a vibrant hub of community, generosity, and human dignity.
Source: Self Help Hunger Program
We are thrilled to support DBCFSN, a young organization who recently won the Food Sovereignty Prize which recognizes grassroots groups fighting for a democratic food system. The Network strives to ensure the African American population of Detroit has access to safe, accessible food.
DBCFSN is dreaming big with their Detroit People’s Co-op. It will be a full-service grocery store, open to the general public, and cooperatively-owned by member/owners. Creating more than 20 jobs, the co-op aims to increase access to healthy, sustainably grown food while building community ownership and empowerment.
Source: Detroit Metro Times
With only two staff, Banteay Srei is the leading voice against sex exploitation and trafficking in Oakland. Many of us don’t know this: Oakland is one of the top 15 cities in the U.S for sex trafficking, which disproportionately impacts Asian & Pacific Islander (API) women. Banteay Srei provides a safe space, sex positive education, community building activities, and leadership development for API women to foster cultural pride and self-determination. The name Banteay Srei comes from an ancient temple in cambodia honoring the strength and unity of female deities and means “the women’s temple”.
Banteay Srei
Desiree Alliance is a coalition of sex workers, health professionals, social scientists, professional sex educators, and their supporting networks working together for an improved understanding of the sex industry and its human, social and political impacts. Every year, Desiree hosts a national conference in New Orleans, as part of its grassroots network-building work. It’s an space unlike any other - sex workers and supporters come together to discuss deeply personal challenges, dream boldly, and advocate for human, labor and civil rights for all workers in the sex industry.
Desiree Alliance
January 2018
Black Organizing Project
The Black Organizing Project is a powerful Oakland-based group that is training up black organizers to fight the school-to-prison pipeline. BOP is pushing the frontiers of community organizing, visioning safe communities, and evolving youth leadership. As Jackie Byers said in our interview with her last month: “No real historic change has ever sounded realistic in the current condition.” BOP cultivates the courage in black organizers to name that seemingly intractable future where their communities are free from oppression and terror.
They have won new policies, such as the elimination of a school precedence to expel students for willful defiance (which black students are disproportionately expelled for).
Undocu Black
Source: 2016 Undocumented and Black Convening
Undocu Black is a multigenerational national network of currently and formerly undocumented Black people. UndocuBlack Network’s mission is twofold: 1) to “Blackify” this country’s understanding of the undocumented population and 2) to facilitate access to resources for the Black undocumented community. Their vision is to have truly inclusive immigrant rights and racial justice movements that advocate for the rights of Black undocumented individuals.
UndocuBlack emerged just two years ago out of The Undocumented and Black Convening, a first-of-its kind national gathering of over 65 Black undocumented persons in Miami, Florida in January 2016.
December 2017
Blue Heart funding supports Boricua’s critical rebuilding efforts. They are directing weekly ‘Brigades’, which include 20-40 people providing direct food, water, and emotional support to those impacted by the Puerto Rico hurricanes. They also provide food production equipment and agroecology guidance to rural communities in recovery. In the next phase of their #JustRecovery, they will use new funding to rebuild infrastructure in rural communities towards a vision of food sovereignty. Before the storm, PR imported 80% of their food. The recovery process from the storm is an opportunity to shift that status quo. Boricua is advancing a vision that enables PR to be independent in how they grow and share their food and energy infrastructure.
November 2017
El/La Para TransLatinas
El/La is a grassroots organization led by and for transgender Latinas (TransLatinas), based in San Francisco. They support the survival and improve the quality of life of TransLatinas in the Bay Area. In their words: “We respond to those who see us as shameful, disposable or less than human. We are here to reflect the style and grace of our survival, and to make new paths for ourselves.” El/La emerged in 2006, and is based on 10 years of HIV prevention campaigning by the founding team. They continue to offer HIV prevention services for TransLatinas, as part of a larger holistic set of programs to support the mental, emotional, physical, sexual, and economic health of transgender Latina women.
Organización Latina de Trans en Texas
Organización Latina de Trans en Texas is a grassroots organization led by and for Trans Latina women, based in Houston, Texas. They build collective action to support the survival and improve the quality of life of Trans Latina women across Texas. In their words, their vision is: “Viviendo libremente en una sociedad con igualdad sin importar nuestra identidad de genero.” (living free in an equal society without importance on our gender identity). OLTT offers advocacy, chosen family, and a safe place to rest, learn, and grow for their members in a state that has particularly high rates of harassment and discrimination against Trans people. According to a 2015 UCLA study, 79% of transgender people from Texas reported having experienced harassment or mistreatment at work, and 45% reported that they were not hired, 26% reported that they were fired because of their gender identity or expression.
October 2017
People's Community Medics
The People’s Community Medics was founded in 2011 by Sharena Thomas and Lesley Phillips. As members of the Oscar Grant Committee we conducted an independent investigation and learned of the refusal of the police to call an ambulance for 20 minutes for the fatally wounded Oscar Grant, the PMC founders decided that people need to learn basic emergency first aid so that we can help one another until an ambulance arrives. Since March 2012 PMC has been giving free trainings in basic emergency first aid for treating seizures, gunshot wounds and stabbings to folks of all ages in Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond, Berkeley, Oxnard, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland.
Ujimaa Medics
Ujimaa Medics teaches people how to be the heroes of their neighborhoods. We offer trainings in urban emergency first response, primarily to people who live in, or love people who live in communities where shootings often occur. We train on how to maneuver to protect yourself, how to help the injured, manage to chaos, and what to do when the police and paramedics arrive.
We also offer and are developing other emergency trainings. This includes a training on how to prevent asthma attacks, as well as how to help someone having a mild to moderate asthma attack and prevent it from becoming more serious.
Source: umedics.org
September 2017
AlternateROOTS
Alternate ROOTS is a group of artists and cultural organizers in the U.S. south creating art rooted in community, place, tradition, and spirit. Alternate ROOTS is committed to something radical: making work advancing social justice in, with, by, for and about artists’ communities. Their annual ROOTS week is a gathering for hundreds of artists to learn practical skills for building democratic art institutions, share new ideas, and nourish a network of creative revolutionaries.
August 2017
POOR Magazine
POOR Magazine is a poor people-led/indigenous people-led arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, art, education and advocacy to folks in poverty. They visibilize poor people in their own words, and they challenge the de-humanization of poor people that happens in the US. Their organizing model enables poor people to determine their own futures, using tools of self-advocacy and creative expression.
WRAP
The Western Regional Advocacy Project tackles the root causes of homelessness by uniting local social justice organizations to hold government accountable to creating just housing policy and ending homelessness. With only 3 staff, WRAP conducts street outreach and organizing, produces critical research, and engages in direct action.
July 2017
Sogorea Te' Land Trust
The Sogorea Te Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led community organization that facilitates the return of Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone lands in the San Francisco Bay Area to Indigenous stewardship. Sogorea Te creates opportunities for all people living in Ohlone territory to work together to re-envision the Bay Area community and what it means to live on Ohlone land.
Blue Heart's funding will go towards the general operating funds of the Ohlone women who are creating the land trust. It will be the first land trust in the US created and run by Indigenous women.
Winnemem Wintu
The McCloud River Salmon Restoration Project is an initiative led by the Winnemem Wintu tribe of Northern California. Chinook Salmon ("Nur") travel between the Pacific Ocean and the McCloud River for their annual spawning cycle, but are on the verge of extinction due to dams, water pollution, and a changing climate. Only 1% returned to spawn in 2015. But the tribe is working with biologists to successfully re-establish a native population.
The funding from Blue Heart members will go towards supporting the Winnemem Wintu to transport the fish stocks from New Zealand to the McCloud River.
June 2017
Peacock Rebellion
Peacock Rebellion is an SF Bay Area -based, queer + trans people of color crew of artist-activist-healers. They make performing, literary and media arts magic for social, economic and environmental justice. Through live local cabaret shows, touring productions, workshops, games they are working towards epic community transformation.
Blue Heart's funding supported Peacock's general operating costs, which were vital support for their June Brouhaha shows - a 2-day Trans People of Color Comedy Festival that is the first of its kind in the US!
Marsha P. Johnson Institute
Led by renowned Black trans activist Elle Hearns, the Marsha P Johnson Institute is a response to the increasing murder rate of Black trans women. Given the murder rate from 2010 to present, transgender women experience a greater risk of death by hate violence than any other group in the United States.
Blue Heart's funding supported the executive planning committee's retreat and their general operating costs as the Institute formally launches in Fall 2017.
May 2017
Youth United for Community Action
YUCA is a youth-led, grassroots organization in East Palo Alto. For 23 years, they have built broad-base coalitions across East Palo Alto to go to bat on the biggest issues, such as gentrification, education, and climate change. In its lifetime, YUCA has trained over 150 low-income youth of color as core youth organizers and 650 low-income youth of color as members. Training involves political education, building critical analysis, and practicing community organizing by building and implementing campaigns. In 2007, YUCA helped shut down Romic, a hazardous waste plant in East Palo Alto, after 11 years of tireless campaigning.
April 2017
Anti-Police Terror Project
The Anti-Police Terror Project is a black-led coalition dedicated to ending violence perpetuated against black, brown and poor people by the state. Based out of Oakland, CA, APTP provides emotional and material support to families impacted by police violence, advocates for policies that reduce the over-policing of black and brown communities, and builds alternative community-based systems to calling the police.
Blue Heart provided unrestricted core funding to help APTP expand their grassroots, holistic model of family support and violence reduction.
March 2017
El Quinto Sol de America
El Quinto Sol de America is a grassroots organization that uses art and education to create empower low-income rural communities in California’s Central Valley. The majority of the residents in these communities are laborers in agricultural fields and processing plants, predominantly monolingual Spanish speakers. EQS builds the skills and leadership capacity of their members so that they can understand and advocate for policies that support the health and safety of their communities.
Blue Heart funding supported El Quinto Sol's summer youth arts and culture program.
February 2017
Arab Resources Organizing Center
The Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) is a grassroots organization working to empower and organize the Arab-American community towards justice and self-determination. AROC members build community power in the Bay Area by participating in leadership development, political education, and campaigns. Recognizing the diversity of experiences and interests within the Arab community, AROC devises a multi-pronged strategy to meet those needs while prioritizing the most marginalized sectors of our constituency to inform our work. AROC provides a centralized space for analysis, strategy, and formulation of concrete campaigns to organize for change.
Blue Heart funding supported AROC's youth power-building work.
January 2017
Indigenous Environmental Network
The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is an indigenous-led organization based in Minnesota. With just four staff members, it has risen to become one of the leading organizers behind and respected voices advocating for indigenous rights, including the resistance movement at Standing Rock. IEN is a critical connector of hundreds of Indigenous, faith-based, women, youth, labor, environmental, and ethnic organizations. Their annual national gatherings are the common ground for education and organizing around resisting extractive interests and building alternatives. They are the “eyes and ears of tribal grassroots, traditional leadership and small disenfranchised tribes and Alaska villages on environmental justice issues.”
Blue Heart subscriber funds went towards IEN's general operating budget, which has been supporting staff in organizing at Standing Rock.
December 2016
Planting Justice
Planting Justice is a grassroots organization with a mission to democratize access to affordable, nutritious food by empowering urban residents with the skills, resources, and knowledge they need to maximize food production, expand job opportunities, and ensure environmental sustainability in the Bay Area.
Blue Heart subscriber funds supported Planting Justice’s re-entry programs, which support employees across the organization returning home from San Quentin prison. Since 2009, Planting Justice has built over 400 edible permaculture gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area, worked with five high-schools to develop food justice curriculum and created 20 green jobs for men transitioning from prison in the food justice movement.
November 2016
Movement Generation
Movement Generation inspires and engages vibrant social movements led by low-income communities and communities of color committed to a Just Transition away from profit and pollution and towards healthy, resilient and life-affirming local economies.
Blue Heart subscriber funds helped grow Movement Generation’s Justice and Ecology Project, which trains community leaders, activists, and organizers in the development of local, sustainable, socially-just economies and participatory democracy. Since 2007, the Justice and Ecology Project has engaged over 150 organizations and thousands of change agents through intensive retreats, political education, hands-on skills workshops, peer exchange, campaign development, alliance building, and strategic support.
October 2016
AYPAL
AYPAL is a leadership development, community organizing and coalition building organization that seeks to empower Oakland’s low-income Asian & Pacific Islander immigrant and refugee families.
Blue Heart funding supported AYPAL’s summer leadership development program and its arts activism projects that explore and celebrate AYPAL youth history, culture, and identity. Since 1998, AYPAL has developed the leadership of over 500 Youth Leaders and has engaged over 5000 young people in grassroots campaigns.
