Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, founded in 1996 grew out of Bay Area PoliceWatch, a small initiative founded in 1995 as a hotline for victims of police brutality. The organization was named after Ella Baker (1903-1986), a largely behind-the-scenes organizer and architect of the civil rights movement, who believed in the power of everyday people to change lives. This Center conducts justice work to ensure dignity and opportunity for low-income people and people of color.  Throughout our history, we have held campaigns related to civic engagement, violence prevention, justice reform, and police brutality.

In the Ella Baker Center’s 25 years of existence, it has been at the forefront of political movements at the intersection of state-sponsored violence, criminal justice reform, and economic development. This Center has been leading policy reform efforts to advance a new vision for the way forward. This new vision is called Truth and Reinvestment, and involves an honest and authentic assessment of the past while setting new priorities that invests energy in people-centered solutions.  The “Truth” means reckoning with the reality of racial injustice and talking about how our country has continuously profited from shackles, walls, and jails in communities of color. “Reinvestment” means advancing solutions that create opportunity for families and neighborhoods.

Mission

For over twenty-five years the EBC has worked locally, statewide, and nationally to shift resources away from prisons and punishment and towards opportunities that make our communities safe, healthy, and strong. We believe that what you water grows. That’s why we mobilize everyday people to build power and prosperity in our communities.

Values

At the Ella Baker Center, we win by doing our liberation work in alignment with and guided by our core values: 

• Prioritize people most impacted by policing and prisons 
• Accountability 
• Black Liberation 
• Interconnection 
• Transformation 
• Culture of Care and Healing 
• Self-Determination