The Gathering for Justice

Founded in 2005 by Harry Belafonte and led since 2010 by President and CEO Carmen Perez-Jordan, the mission of The Gathering for Justice is to end child incarceration and eliminate the racial inequities that permeate the justice system. The Gathering for Justice has two state-based task forces, Justice League NYC (established in 2013) and Justice League California (established in 2017), both of which bring together juvenile and criminal justice experts, cultural leaders, advocates, artists and individuals who’ve experienced or been impacted by incarceration directly. We believe in an intergenerational organizing model which draws from diverse communities to utilize our combined power to build the agenda for sustained Black and Brown liberation and healing. In the footsteps of our legendary founder’s activism, The Gathering for Justice and its Justice League state task forces utilize Kingian nonviolence as a social application for systemic change and civic engagement.

Since 2013, The Gathering has stepped up our work building justice initiatives and supporting movements on multiple fronts. We’ve led policy initiatives for police accountability, organized as a diverse ‘family coalition’ to build the agenda for sustained Black and Brown liberation, catalyzed policies to stop the school to prison pipeline, end racial profiling, and stop the militarization of police, and shifted narratives about youth and people who are formerly incarcerated. Since organizing and providing the foundation for the 2017 Women’s March, the largest single-day of protest in history at the time, we’ve expanded our work throughout the country, and built the foundation for long-term justice reform in California, New York, and across the country.