Winning Campaigns to Transform the Criminal Justice System

FICPFM Organizer Training Fellowship 2020

As communities across the United States rise up to challenge racial injustice and mass incarceration, criminal justice organizers on the front line have also been investing time to learn new skills to organize their communities to build the power needed for systemic change.

Recently, 76 criminal justice organizers from across the United States graduated from the first online Organizing Training Fellowship of the Formerly Incarcerated People and Families Movement (FICPFM), delivered by the Leading Change Network.

The Fellowship exists to strengthen the power of directly impacted people — as individuals, organizations, and as a coalition — to win campaigns that fundamentally transform the criminal justice system and challenge mass incarceration. This work has been made more urgent by the uprising for racial justice and a global pandemic that has exacerbated existing social fault lines across our communities.

Over six weeks, organizers built their capacity to organize by learning five leadership practices for base-building and winning campaigns, including storytelling, relationships, team building, strategy, taking action.

Each week organizers joined a 3-hour online experiential workshops designed to directly strengthen their work on the ground, featuring a new skill each week and with hands-on opportunities to practice and receive feedback.

Also just last week, 12 members of the original cohort graduated from a follow-up training of trainers program and will now be supported to train and coach others across the FICPFM Movement.

LCN’s Lead Trainer Abel Cano says: “We thought a lot about what it actually takes to not just mobilize for a moment, but to strengthen a movement. True change comes when people most impacted by the problem become authors of their own solutions”

We would like to take this opportunity and thank the heroes who made this all possible. The dedication and contributions of the core and coaching teams throughout the program have made it the success that it is.

The core team consisted of Sarah ElRaheb, James Sleep, Jeff Russet, Kai Mateo, Abel R. Cano, Ana Babovic, and Mais Irqsusi.

The coaching team comprised Anjali Rodrigues, Nneka Akubeze, Kortni Malone, Miya Cain, Marissa Ocampo, R. Akwese Nkemontoh, Kai Mateo, Andrea Ornelas, Maggie Hughes, and Abel R. Cano.

Get in contact with us if you’re looking for support to build the capacity of your organization, campaign and people in the areas of organizing or storytelling. We’re here to help!