When the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights started in 1996, we were small. Very small. In every conceivable way. We had one full-time staff person. We had one computer that co-founder Van Jones brought from his home. Our office was literally a closet, donated by the ever-generous Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.
Not exactly an auspicious beginning.
Fast forward 10 years. We have a staff of 24 world-class human rights activists. We've graduated from a closet to a real office, from an office to a floor, and from a floor to an entire building in Oakland. And we've built a record as one of the most effective and innovative human rights organizations in America.
How did we get here? Read on...
Getting Started: 1995-1996
Before there was Ella Baker Center, there was Bay Area PoliceWatch. Newly minted attorney Van Jones launched the hotline for victims of police brutality in 1995 under the auspices of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. Little did he suspect the hotline would be in such high demand, soon getting 20 calls every day. It became clear that Bay Area PoliceWatch would need to leave the nest; the Lawyers Committee just couldn't hold it.
Our first office was...modest.
On September 1, 1996, Ella Baker Center opened payroll. Named for the civil rights movement's unsung champion of students, sharecroppers and everyday people, Ella Baker Center proudly proclaimed, "This is not your parents' civil rights organization." Seeing the denial of voting, housing and employment rights as symptoms of a much deeper sickness, Ella Baker Center wanted to heal society by transforming it.
Driven by that passion and a willingness to take on tough fights that nobody else would, we chose our mission: to document, challenge and expose human rights abuses.
Not many thought we would survive our first year. But within a few months we became embroiled in a heated campaign in San Francisco that would show everyone that we were here to stay.
Justice for Aaron Williams: 1996-1997
In 1995, San Francisco police officer Marc Andaya killed unarmed black man Aaron Williams. Andaya led a team of cops in viciously beating and kicking Williams, emptying three cans of pepper spray into his face, and hogtying him in an unventilated police van where he died.
Andaya was a known loose cannon. He had already killed another unarmed black man and had 37 formal complaints of racism and brutality and five lawsuits filed against him.
But the local media cast Andaya as the victim and Williams as the criminal. And the San Francisco Police Commission dismissed disciplinary charges against the officers. That's when Bay Area PoliceWatch got involved.
Bay Area PoliceWatch helped lead a community-based justice campaign that put Andaya on public trial for killing Williams. After a long, seesaw battle that nobody thought the community could win, the Police Commission finally did the right the thing and fired Andaya from the San Francisco Police Department.
This improbable, unprecedented victory filled everyone at Ella Baker Center with the feeling that anything was possible. It set the stage for the growth spurt that followed.
"The Explosion": 1997-1999
Taking a few central lessons from the Justice for Aaron Williams Campaign, we launched a slew of campaigns, initiatives and organizing projects. From youth group Third Eye Movement to New York City PoliceWatch to transgender activist collective TransAction (with CUAV) to INSWatch (with La Raza Centro Legal), Ella Baker Center took on the tough fights and issues that most groups wouldn't touch.
Everyone here worked crazy hours; some seemed to never leave the office. But the excitement of the time carried us. We knew that all the effort and experimentation would pay off in the form of a powerful movement. That pay off came in 1999-2000, when Third Eye Movement really took off.
Birth of a Movement: 1999-2000
The "No on 21" Campaign inspired thousands of young people.
In 1999 and 2000, Third Eye Movement provide the first real proof that Ella Baker Center could translate the success of Bay Area PoliceWatch into other arenas.
After the Justice for Aaron Williams campaign, young people who wanted to continue the momentum of the campaign formed a new group: Third Eye Movement. The group spent a couple of years working on various local issues, including the well-publicized police murder of Sheila Detoy. But it really came into its own when Proposition 21, a draconian initiative to put 14 year-olds in adult courts and 16 year-olds in adult prisons, made it onto the California ballot.
Third Eye Movement, now with chapters in San Francisco and Oakland, helped lead a broad network of youth organizations fighting against Proposition 21 in the Bay Area. With innovative, militant, non-violent direct action, Third Eye Movement became a national example of a new generation of "hip-hop activism." Thousands of young people got involved in politics for the first time, and it was beautiful. Thanks to the youth and student movement, the five Bay Area counties were the only ones in the state to reject Proposition 21 in March 2000.
Tough Times: 2000-2001
Even though we defeated Proposition 21 in the local area, the rest of California passed it overwhelmingly. It was a hard time for us. The entire local youth and student movement fell into despair, mistrust and infighting. The beautiful movement we had been celebrating just months earlier came apart at the seams. We hadn't just lost the vote; we had lost each other.
This trend was evident throughout the local youth and student movement, and Third Eye Movement and Ella Baker Center were no exception. Third Eye Movement split down the middle. The San Francisco chapter spun off from Ella Baker Center and became Conscious Roots. The Oakland chapter remained with Ella Baker Center and became Let's Get Free.
Van has called this time "a dark night of the soul for the organization." Like any hard time, this period was full of lessons for us. We learned that we needed to build a stable base of support. We learned that relying solely on mobilization wasn't enough; we needed to do some deeper organizing, too. And, most acutely, we were starting to see that we needed to offer a positive vision for the changes we wanted to see. Saying "NO" was no longer enough. We needed to give people something to say "YES" about.
Taking these lessons to heart, Let's Get Free started to engage in deep grassroots organizing for police accountability in Oakland. The rest of Ella Baker Center looked to apply them in an all-new endeavor, launching what would become our biggest campaign yet: Books Not Bars.
Books Not Bars Stops the 'Super-Jail': 2001-2003
For all the hard lessons we learned, the Proposition 21 fight and the period that followed it also taught us that a lot of people agreed with us: too many resources were going to punishing young people and not enough were going to give them opportunities. We knew that if we could give these people a way to get involved, we could capture that energy and turn it into real, meaningful change. So in 2001 we launched Books Not Bars.
Before we could even develop a first-year plan, we learned that Oakland's Alameda County was finalizing plans to build one of the nation's largest (per capita) juvenile halls — an enormous 'Super Jail for Kids.' It was an outrageous plan, especially at a time when juvenile crime was steadily declining. Books Not Bars and our ally Youth Force Coalition made a decision: we would not allow Alameda County build the Super-Jail.
It was another roller coaster of a fight, with countless twists and turns and ups and downs. But, once again, we won. After three years, the County finally agreed to cut the proposed expansion by 75 percent and to locate the hall much closer to the families whose kids were going to be inside.
We had never been in such a long campaign, and we were pretty tired when it ended. But we had learned a lot. For the first time, we had combined our tried-and-true "outsider" protest tactics with a sophisticated "insider" policy agenda. Add to that the experience of managing the most complex coalition we had ever been a part of and you get a set of lessons that prepared us well for the next step in our growth.
But first, we took a few months to rest, recuperate and refocus. Sadly, part of refocusing was closing down New York City PoliceWatch, which had helped a lot of people but had never really become self-sustaining in the way we had hoped. By early 2004, we were ready to take what we had learned to a new campaign.
Taking on the California Youth Authority: 2004-present
As proud as we were of the victory in the Super-Jail fight, we realized that, once again, we had only succeeded in stopping something bad from happening. We were still looking to take the initiative, campaigning proactively for our vision of what the juvenile justice system should look like.
In early 2004, a series of expert reports revealed to the entire world what we and many others had known for years: the California Youth Authority, the state's youth prison system, was a hotbed of violence and human rights abuses. Books Not Bars realized that this was an unprecedented opportunity to push for change to this system of warehouse-like prisons and jumped on it.
We have made incredible progress in the first two years of this campaign. The youth prison population is down to just over half of what it was when we started. We have built the first-ever statewide network of families with children in the Youth Authority, boasting 400 member families. And Books Not Bars' vision for reform — a rehabilitation-based model like the one used in Missouri — has become THE point of departure in the debate in the state capital.
It's been an amazing two years, and we aren't done yet. When we finish, California's juvenile justice system will no longer be a national disgrace; it will be a national model.
Expanding Our Vision: Green-Collar Jobs Campaign & Silence the Violence
Ten years in the trenches have taught us a lot. Most of it is on display in the campaign to transform the California Youth Authority. But one of the most important lessons we have learned over the past decade is bigger than Books Not Bars, Bay Area PoliceWatch or any of the other work we've been doing. And it wasn't until we took a step back that we really learned the lesson. When we did, it transformed our organization completely.
Green-Collar Jobs Campaign rallies for oil independence in Oakland.
We have often pointed out that the safest communities are not the ones with the most police and the most prisons. They are the ones with the best jobs and the best schools. But after almost ten years of fighting against unfairness in the criminal justice system, we realized that we had been working on just the first half of that simple, profound truth. If we really wanted to help our communities escape the cycle of incarceration, we had to start focusing on job, wealth and health creation. That realization led to Green-Collar Jobs Campaign and Silence the Violence.
Green-Collar Jobs Campaign (formerly Reclaim the Future) is our newest initiative. Its goal is to bring "green collar" jobs to Oakland, California. Quite simply, Oakland is under-employed and over-polluted. We can solve both of these problems by making sure that the emerging "clean and green" economy comes to Oakland, and that the jobs go to people coming out of prison or at risk for going in.
What was once Let's Get Free is now Silence the Violence, a youth-led campaign to bring peace to the streets of Oakland. The idea is simple: decades of increased policing and incarceration have not led to peaceful streets. But we know what will: increased opportunity, especially for young people. Starting with a "Summer of Non-Violence" and a compilation hip-hop CD with some of the Bay Area's hottest rappers talking about neighborhood violence, Silence the Violence is looking to create a culture of peace and opportunity in Oakland.
The Future: Justice, Opportunity & Peace
A lot has changed in ten years.
Ella Baker Center is no longer the new kid on the block — the kid that nobody thought would last. It is a mature human rights agency, firmly established as a community institution in the Bay Area.
Lighting a candle for justice, peace and opportunity.
Ella Baker Center has four exciting campaigns and initiatives, not just one, as Books Not Bars, Green-Collar Jobs Campaign and Silence the Violence have joined Bay Area PoliceWatch
And our mandate is now far larger than to just document, challenge and expose human rights abuses in the criminal justice system. Today, we aim to revitalize urban America by working for justice in the system, opportunity in our cities and peace on our streets.
But one thing hasn't changed: our passion for real and meaningful change in the lives of everyday people. We see the beauty and promise in humanity, and we won't rest until that beauty gets every chance to shine and everyone has a chance to fulfill their promise.
