About Us
Mission & Theory
of Change
We make change in specific Southern states, together with partners, through Movements that center Black liberation and directly impacted individuals, and work to advance racial, gender, social, and economic justice.
The Foundation of the Third Reconstruction
Right to Inclusive and Reparative Democracy
Protect & Expand the Ballot
Democracy in this country has never fully lived up to its own ideals, and the distance between its promise and our reality has not been accidental. Since this country’s founding, Black, Brown and poor people have been deliberately and systematically excluded from power, and that wound doesn’t heal simply by being ignored. Deliberate exclusion leaves deliberate harm, and that harm demands more than acknowledgement.
Our vision of success for the right to inclusive and reparative democracy is a U.S. South where all communities—particularly those historically excluded—can fully participate in decision-making and have equitable representation in the policies that shape their lives. This includes removing structural barriers to participation, advancing policies that repair past harms, and building sustained civic power rooted in racial justice and human rights.
At Forward Justice, we fight for a democracy that doesn’t look away from its past, dares to build what was never realized and holds sacred the right of every person to shape the world they live in.
Related Campaigns
Right to Reimagined Community Safety and Justice
End Carceral Abuses
For the right to reimagined community safety and justice, our vision of success is a transformative approach to safety that moves beyond punitive systems toward prevention, healing, and community-based solutions.
The call to reimagine community safety is not a rejection of the need for peace. It’s an acknowledgment of the reality that the systems we were told would keep us safe have too often been the source of our greatest harm. For generations, entire communities have been policed, punished, and criminalized rather than protected, resourced, and heard.
People from those same communities are often funneled into a criminal legal system that doesn’t live up to its promise of liberty and justice for all. Sentencing disparities, wrongful convictions,
We fight for systems of community safety and justice that measure their success not by the number of people they cage, but by the number of people who are housed, fed, resourced, and living in dignity.
Right to an Equitable and Resilient Economy
Living Wages & Basic Rights
Success in the right to an equitable and resilient economy means ensuring that all people have access to living wages, stable employment, and economic systems that prioritize fairness and long-term sustainability.
We believe in an economy that prioritizes human dignity. A society that ensures jobs pay living wages and people have equitable access to affordable healthcare, childcare and education.
Wealth in this country has always flowed toward some and been withheld from others, and those lines have been drawn strategically through policy, law, and the deliberate exclusion of entire communities from economic life.
In many instances the communities that are most excluded from America’s promise of economic opportunity are the same people who provide the very labor that creates wealth for so many others.
We fight for systems resilient enough to protect the most vulnerable, honest enough to reckon with the harm they’ve caused, and just enough to build something that has never fully existed in this country.
Related Campaigns
In Practice
What We Commit To
We challenge and change laws, policies, systems, and practices that harm the most vulnerable in our society and obstruct our full liberation. Together in deep, collaborative relationship, we work with movement partners and community members to:
Protect and expand voting rights
End the carceral system and its abuses of Black, Brown and poor people
Reduce barriers to re-entry and increase resources for formerly incarcerated people and their families
Ensure equal access to basic human rights like healthcare, jobs with living wages, and clean water
Reimagine public safety and the role of police in our communities
Build new practices and systems rooted in transformative justice and collective care