Advancement Project

=About Advancement Project=

Advancement Project, a policy, communications and legal action group committed to racial justice, was founded by a team of veteran civil rights lawyers in 1998. Our mission is:

"To develop, encourage, and widely disseminate innovative ideas, and pioneer models that inspire and mobilize a broad national racial justice movement to achieve universal opportunity and a just democracy!"

Co-Directors

Advancement Project's co-directors are Stephen English, Molly Munger, Constance L. Rice, John Kim, Penda Hair, and Judith Browne-Dianis.

Board Of Directors

Advancement Project's board of directors includes Harry Belafonte, former Assistant Attorney General Bill Lann Lee, SEIU Executive Vice President Gerry Hudson, and Jose Alvarez, former Northeast Regional Director of the AFL-CIO

Theory of Change

Ten years ago, Advancement Project’s founding team of veteran civil rights lawyers believed that structural racism could begin to be dismantled by multi-racial grassroots organizing focused on changing public policies and supported by lawyers and communications strategies. The collective experience of Advancement Project’s founders, as well as the conclusion of some of the most creative thinkers in the civil rights field, suggested that when this method of change is employed, it can have much greater resonance than policy advocacy, litigation, or organizing tend to have on their own. Yet racial justice efforts that incorporated this essential—and powerful—mix of lawyers, organizers, and communication experts rarely occurred.

Advancement Project was created to develop and inspire community-based solutions based on the same high quality legal analysis and public education campaigns that produced the landmark civil rights victories of earlier eras. From Advancement Project’s inception, we have worked “on-the-ground,” helping organized communities of color dismantle and reform the unjust and inequitable policies that undermine the promise of democracy. Simultaneously, we have aggressively sought and seized opportunities to promote this approach to racial and social justice among our colleagues and allies in the organizing, legal, policy, and philanthropic communities.

To implement our theory of change, Advancement Project continues to operate on two planes: locally, we provide direct, hands-on support for organized communities in their struggles for racial and social justice, providing legal and communications resources for on-the-ground efforts; nationally, we actively broaden and extend the practice of community-centered racial justice lawyering through training, networking, creation of tools and resources, media outreach and public education. We also operate a communications department that, in partnership with allies, uses sophisticated strategies to raise awareness of racial and social inequities and generate public will for progressive and systemic change.

We choose project activities, whether national or local, with the potential to build power at the grassroots level and to reframe and accelerate the quest for racial justice. Particularly in historically challenging arenas, such as educational equity and voting rights, we work with our allies to set the racial justice movement’s public policy agenda.

Solid relationships are at the core of our work. They define and shape our ability to intervene with successful reform efforts and develop strong coalitions of allies that share Advancement Project’s vision of a just democracy. From our inception, we have linked communities and local groups working on allied issues and causes, lawyers, journalists, and policy analysts with data and relevant research, technical and communications support. By supporting local communities’ struggles for racial and social justice, we advance equity, access, and universal opportunity for those left behind—and pushed aside—in America.

Advancement Project's Core Issues

POWER AND DEMOCRACY

"Felony Re-enfranchisement:" People with felony convictions lose access to voting because of the intersection of two systems—the election law system and the criminal justice system. Both systems have been used independently to discriminate against people of color for much of American history.

Advancement Project started laying the groundwork for a campaign in Virginia to re-enfranchise thousands of former prisoners in the summer of 2003. We focused our work in Virginia based on the large number of individuals in Virginia who are eligible for voting rights restoration, the Commonwealth's streamlined voter restoration of rights application procedures and the Governor Warner's vocal support for restoration of voting rights, During the initial phase of the project, we forged solid working relationships with key leaders and numerous community and faith-based organizations. We also conducted workshops across the state to acquaint service providers, faith-based groups and others with the clemency process and the potential it holds to make a difference to thousands of formerly incarcerated persons.

"Right to Vote:" Most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that there is no provision of U.S. law that affirmatively guarantees citizens the right to vote. No such right is explicitly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the 1965 Voting Rights Act or any other federal legislation. Even the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution do not explicitly guarantee the fundamental right to vote to all citizens.

Advancement Project's universal right to vote initiative is an extension of U.S. Representative Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.'s pioneering work (House Joint Resolution 28), which spearheaded the most recent movement to enshrine the right to vote into the U.S. Constitution by amendment. Advancement Project's Right to Vote Public Education Initiative seeks to increase public awareness of the need for stronger voting rights enforcement, including the ramifications of an affirmative, federally protected right to vote.

Our current activities include legal/ policy research and analysis; research on public opinion and attitudes; outreach to important stakeholders and development of a strategic public education plan.

"Voter Protection:"Advancement Project's Voter Protection Program addresses a bedrock racial justice issue: expanding the active electorate. Our work focuses on increasing democratic participation in low-income and minority communities by investigating obstacles to voter participation and providing mechanisms for removing those obstacles, generating reform efforts that seek to expand opportunities for democratic participation, building support for a more transformational solution for re-enfranchising formerly incarcerated people, and facilitating alliances among multi-racial groups. In the wake of the blatant and widespread irregularities of the 2000 election, Advancement Project moved to expand its Power and Democracy program.

OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN:

Advancement Project's Opportunity to Learn Program seeks to take decisive actions to eliminate institutional barriers that exclude children of color and poor children from quality K-12 education and opportunities to pursue college degrees. Currently, the Program comprises two initiatives: Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track and Quality Education for All.

INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT:

Hurricane Katrina exposed deep fault lines in America's profession of social justice for all its citizens. As the world watched coverage of the devastation, the nation came face to face with the unaddressed racial and social disparities endemic to the world's remaining Super Power and self-proclaimed champion of democracy. Furthermore, while many Americans showed great compassion for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, others demonstrated that even now racism runs deep and that when faced with decisions concerning the life or death of people of color, some seemed willing, if not eager, to dispatch poor and Black victims of Katrina to their deaths. While it is true that government agencies evinced a staggering lack of preparedness and maintenance of emergency safeguards, other cases were blatant in their underlying intent. For example, in Gretna, Louisiana, sheriff department officers reportedly used force to stop hundreds of African-Americans from evacuating New Orleans, despite the extreme emergency conditions that necessitated their passage through Gretna to reach safety.

Advancement Project is employing its method of operation to assist Gulf Coast organizations in their recovery and rebuilding efforts. We are forming deep partnerships with organizations that seek to ensure that the voices of low-income Gulf Coast residents are heard and weigh in on the discussions about rebuilding. We are providing legal assistance to these organizations and plan to provide strategic communications assistance.

IMMIGRANT JUSTICE:

The United States is experiencing a dramatic demographic shift as more people seek access to the economic opportunities available in this country. These new Americans come with high hopes but often encounter discrimination, both overt and institutional. As the immigration reform debate ensued at the national level, over the past year, the immigrants’ rights movement gained momentum simultaneously as communities of color across the country took collective action to challenge restrictive and discriminatory immigration proposals. Marches and protests in major cities were a promising sign and provided hope for a continuing mass movement. Meanwhile, at the state and local levels, including in states like Virginia, anti-immigrant sentiment continues to fester, and has shaped local policies.

While much of Advancement Project’s work over the years has been in collaboration with immigrant communities, our projects have increasingly focused specifically on issues unique to immigrants. Over the last few years, Advancement Project has worked with several community groups to fight anti-immigrant acts and protect the rights of immigrants in their efforts to attain a better life for themselves.

External links

* [http://www.advancementproject.org Advancement Project DC]
* [http://www.advanceproj.org Advancement Project LA]
* [http://www.healthycity.org Healthy City]
* [http://www.lapdonline.org/search_results/content_basic_view/32828 Rampart Blue Ribbon Panel]