Movement Strategy Center’s newest report, Dare to Change: Environmental Justice Leadership for Climate Justice, Sustainable Communities and a Deep Green Economy, challenges environmental justice leaders to take a bold, proactive and united stance for what we really need and want. Through compelling stories and analysis, Dare to Change demonstrates how EJ leaders are harnessing the vision and solutions emerging from frontline communities to create a world without winners or losers – a world where social, political and economic systems sustain all communities while achieving ecological balance. Dare to Change explores the unique leadership that environmental justice movement brings to this moment and five strategic questions to help the movement generate the synergy, alignment and momentum needed to move to the next level.
by Kristen Zimmerman
Out of the Spiritual Closet: Organizers Transforming the Practice of Social Justice, the first in MSC’s series on Transformative Movement Building, dives into the experiences of individual social justice leaders as they integrate spiritual, creative or otherwise transformative practice into their lives and social justice work. The report introduces Transformative Movement Building as an approach and framework, provides a cultural analysis of where the social justice movement is stuck and how it is being transformed through intentional practice and showcases the stories of leaders who have begun their own transformations.
©2009
This summary highlights findings from the reports Fertile Ground (above) and Climate of Opportunity: Gender and Movement Building at the Intersection of Reproductive Justice and Environmental Justice (published by the Women's Foundation of California). While these are two separate and distinct reports, they share similar foci and findings. The importance of the work they describe, and the extraordinary opportunity they represent, compelled us to create a joint executive summary that links these reports in a useful and proactive way.
Leadership Development and Leadership Change is a report on how a group of social justice organizations, in the Bay Area and nationally, are linking leadership development to executive leadership transitions paying particular attention to race, class, gender, and age. The four collaborating organizations that oversaw the project and the production of this report – Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action, National Community Development Institute, Movement Strategy Center, and Building Movement Project – have all worked with a diverse group of social change oriented nonprofit organizations on leadership issues. We each participated in this project to learn and share lessons on how organizations approach leadership development and leadership transitions, particularly during a time when nonprofits in California and across the U.S. are going through dramatic demographic and generational shifts.
by Kristen Zimmerman and Vera Miao,
for Movement Strategy Center, ©2009
Fertile Ground explores the ideas and work of 24 organizations that are
working for reproductive and environmental justice. The purpose of this report is to highlight the powerful contributions these groups are making to secure safer and healthier environments for all women, children, and communities, and to examine how an intersectional approach to organizing and movement building can lead to more powerful outcomes at all levels.
by the Movement Strategy Center, Susan Lubeck and Zak Sinclair, ©2006
How can our organizations be bold enough to alter the fundamental structural relationships in society, and wise enough to act according to the principles of organizational sustainability and community transformation? This article explores the tensions between these goals, uncovers potential points of unity and develops a holistic framework for change.
by Julie Quiroz-Martinez, ©2010
Culling from interviews with leaders around the country, Expanding Equal Opportunity explores the factors that contributed to defensive wins in 2009, as well as ways to move from defensive to proactive strategies in the future. As this report demonstrates, for the first time in many years, a ripple of momentum exists around the possibility of not only protecting affirmative action, but also of expanding public support and policies that address race and gender inequities.
by Julie Quiroz-Martinez, Diana Pei Wu and Kristen Zimmerman, ©2005
Published by the Movement Strategy Center
ReGeneration examines the powerful visions and strategies of young people in the U.S. environmental justice movement. The Movement Strategy Center interviewed groups across the country, and found that youth organizers in the environmental justice movement are creating new ways to expand leadership, build intergenerational alliances, work sustainably and bridge issue areas and communities. The groups profiled in this report offer models and strategies to reinvigorate every sector of the national progressive movement.
by Julie Quiroz-Martinez, Diana Pei Wu and Kristen Zimmerman, ©2005
Published by the Movement Strategy Center
This 14-page summary captures the key findings, recommendations and conclusions from the full report.
by the Movement Strategy Center, ©2005
Bringing It Together reveals how youth organizing groups across the country are incorporating innovative approaches to support the holistic - emotional, physical, spiritual and political - development of their members. This report profiles six groups that are using a wide range of support strategies, depending on history and context. These new approaches are creating healthy lives in tandem with community change, and leading to a more sustainable social justice movement.
Read a review of Bringing It Together by The Free Child Project
by the Young Wisdom Project of the Movement Strategy Center, with the Youth Speak Out Coalition, ©2004
Making Space Making Change is the only available guide for understanding youth-led organizations and their place in the contemporary youth movement. Follow the stories of five youth-led and youth-driven organizations from around the U.S. - how they started, build youth leadership and power, deal with challenges, and make real change in their communities. This report is for all young organizers and their allies who want to put their principles into practice and invest in the next generation!
Read a review of Making Space, Making Change by The Free Child Project.
by Taj James, ©2005
Published in Social Policy Magazine, "The New Progressive Politics" Issue, Spring 2005.
This article explores ways to unite different strands of the progressive movement in order to build power and create long-lasting social change. It examines four key factors that shape policy and society: building power, confronting prejudice, shifting perception and building public will.
by the Movement Strategy Center, ©2005
Spirit in Motion believes that it is necessary to integrate sustainability into all levels of our movement work. The activities in this toolkit have been developed by Spirit in Motion to support individuals and organizations to increase sustainability in their work and lives.
by the Movement Strategy Center, ©2005
Organizers and activists can use the Wellness Shield to reflect on each part of their day (sunrise, day, sunset and night) and then write down their activities, where they focus their energy, and what they do to sustain themselves at these times. In this way, they create individual maps of where they already have, or need to create, balance in their lives. An elder from the Lakota Nation has supported Spirit In Motion to use this traditional Lakota symbol and way of understanding.
by Shash Yázhí, ©2004
Published in Issue 22 of the NOA Newsletter, July 2004
How can we maintain hope, love and balance in our struggles for social justice? This article examines this central question through Shash Yázhí’s personal story and the work of the Spirit in Motion program.
by Lisa Russ and Josh Kirschenbaum, ©2002
Published as part of PolicyLink’s Equitable Development Toolkit, November 2002
Community mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are increasingly useful tools for promoting equitable development. This overview describes how community mapping efforts are being deployed across the country. It guides readers to the nation’s leading resources, and to the most innovative uses of these new technologies.
by Taj James and Kim McGillicuddy, ©2001
Published in Volume 8, Issue 4 of the Nonprofit Quarterly
This article looks at youth movements around the world to see how the most marginalized young people have influenced decision-makers at the highest levels of power. It examines youth development and youth empowerment work to uncover effective ways of supporting young people as agents of change.
by Taj James, ©2001
How can youth empowerment groups use media messaging to control information so that power ultimately resides in the hands of young people? This overview offers four key principles for supporting youth to use the media for positive change.
An interview with Gihan Perera, co-founder and Executive Director of the Miami Workers Center, about spirit and sustainability in the social justice movement. It was conducted in April 2008 by Neelam Pathikonda, former Spirit in Motion Director, as part of a multi-year research project by the Movement Strategy Center.