Social Justice Community Organizations

Categorical List & self-description:

Arts, Culture & Education

• We are the Asia Pacific Cultural Center (APCC) of Tacoma and our sole purpose is to serve and represent the 47 diverse Asia Pacific Islander (API) cultural communities that call Washington State home. APCC provides Youth, Cultural, and Business programs and services bridging barriers of language, custom, and culture that impede access to resources for API communities.

• The Black Student Union at Tacoma Community College leveraged community connections to raise funds and in-kind donations for the off-campus Ebony Ball. As the year advanced, they took on projects that connected the club to large-scale societal issues. They started a months-long social media drive to promote census participation. And when Covid-19 hit they started hosting “personal item drives,” creating and distributing personal care kits for members of both the TCC community and the larger community.

• Latinx Unidos of the South Sound (LUSS) is a grassroots group that has been advocating for Pierce County's Latinx community since 2016. We have worked with other agencies to organize large-scale events, such as town halls and festivals that have brought together the community in-person and online over the past 5 years. In 2020, our collaborations promoted the US census, developed numerous efforts to reduce COVID-19 impacts to Latinx communities, and held our annual LUSS Festival Latinx in November. Our COVID-19 campaigns are done through partnerships with school districts, health departments, and radio stations.

• The Tacoma Refugee Choir is a loving community of refugees, immigrants, and friends who seek belonging and are committed to creating a more welcoming community. Our mission of creating spaces for authentic expression, interconnection and healing through song and music has included 700+ people from 55 countries. The choir has performed for over 27,000 people at 40+ events including TedX-Seattle and with Symphony Tacoma, been featured on PBS and network television, and produced eight music videos reaching over 130,000 people. Additional programs include “Creating Home Together”- a refugee-centered podcast, community singing events, and group music therapy classes. We may not change conditions for the 90+ million people displaced by wars, famine, and natural disasters, but we can welcome and love those who find themselves in our community.

• Young Business Men of Washington (YBMW) is a non-profit that engages young men who are challenged by negative influences and socio-economic factors that too frequently cut short options and opportunities for success. Our programs mentor young men, provide role models, build teamwork and cultivate leadership among peer group and throughout the community. We also support development of body and mind for physical and educational achievement in order to guide youth toward becoming positive contributors in their families and communities. YBMW not only promotes achievement among our engaged individuals, we also empower them to pass on the art of success on to their peers.

Criminal Justice

• Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest supports immigrant detainees, and welcomes them on their release. The AIDNW Welcome Center is in an RV stationed outside the release gate, and the immigrants know this is a place where they can get help. We can arrange for their transportation to the bus station, airport or taxi, and when needed, we provide temporary housing until more permanent arrangements are made.

• Black Lives Matter Calendar — For the last seven years we have produced and distributed a calendar that enumerates Black lives lost to police killings. The calendar is sold at near cost to organizations that support Black life for use in fundraisers. Our retail price is low, with profits used to donate additional calendars and as donations to organizations that support Black life. Learn more about their research process here.

• Democratic Socialists of America is a grassroots, multi-tendency, socialist organization committed to the radical deepening of democracy and freedom in every aspect of our lives. We seek to create a society liberated from oppression, using tactics rooted in a realistic understanding of how to build workers’ power and how to get free. With nearly 100,000 members, DSA is the largest socialist organization in the US. Our local chapter includes 100s of members working to transform conditions through multi-racial, multi-generation organizing around the most pressing issues. 2021-22 priorities include anti-racism, a Green New Deal for housing, and supporting labor organizing.

• The Institute for Black Justice (IBJ) is a social justice advocacy organization whose vision is True Justice: No Exceptions. Our primary areas of advocacy are child welfare and criminal justice system reform. We also produce a weekly podcast, The Black Robe, and sponsor an annual Freedom Summer Symposium, an intergenerational dialogue that addresses social justice challenges through human-centered design.

• We R Here Families Shoulder to Shoulder is a group of volunteers who support the incarcerated population who are being re-sentenced or going through the clemency process.

Environmental Justice

• 350 Tacoma works collaboratively with others to grow an effective local movement for global climate justice by mobilizing ordinary people through creative action and advocacy. We recognize that climate justice is racial justice and seek to center the voices of those most impacted by the climate crisis. Aiming to embody the values we seek in a transformed world, we work for a safe, just, and sustainable future for all living beings.

• The Climate Reality Project: Tacoma, WA Chapter recognizes the critical need to work with local officials and community members to create and bolster strong climate plans in Pierce County and its cities. Our efforts are designed to strengthen or enact policies to slash our local carbon footprint, promote green energy and transportation, and block permitting of projects that would increase climate emissions. Members deliver free climate presentations, meet with electeds, and strive to address the climate crisis through a climate justice lens. We also host climate discussions and events and work in coalition with other environmentally-minded groups. Also see us on Facebook and Instagram.

• Indivisible Tacoma is a volunteer organization with a mission to elect progressive leaders and advocate for progressive policies. We defend democracy, support universal healthcare, advocate for human immigration policies, and work to save the earth and all species. We promote social, racial, economic, and environmental justice through a lens of equity for all communities. We have a successful track record of helping elect progressive candidates and achieve progressive policies. We are engaged at the local, county, state, and national levels. We endorse and support candidates based on topics of police accountability, voting accessibility, climate and economic justice and many more.

• Sunrise Movement Tacoma is the Tacoma “hub” of the Sunrise Movement, a movement of 50,000 and growing young people who are working to stop the climate crisis by creating millions of good wage clean energy jobs in the process.

Health, Housing & Food Security

• Bonney Lake Food Bank — We are an innovative free grocery store called The Market, located in East Pierce and serving Pierce and King Counties. Located on a farm, we offer a high end farmers market experience and focus relentlessly on curating a healthy and equitable assortment of foods. We have a dignity forward, no rules approach to food security with an organizational culture that emphasizes community centered solutions.

• Faith Action Network is a multi-faith, non-profit organization though which thousands of people and over 160 faith communities across Washington State partner for the common good. Together, we are powerful voices of the faith and conscience advocating for a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world.

• Grit City Co-op is a community driven initiative to open and operate a grocery store in the Hilltop/Central area of Tacoma so that everyone has access to sustainable food at a fair price, while providing a living wage to workers and growing the local food system. We will facilitate conversations around where our food comes from, who produces it, and how it nourishes us. Our goal is to open as soon as possible, and to highlight and host many wonderful gatherings before then.

• The Haki Farmers Collective encourages people of color, including indigenous peoples and the black descendants of American slavery, to reclaim the life-giving knowledge of sustainable farming and plant-based medicine.

• My Sister’s Pantry is a food & clothing bank. We are open three times per month providing pre-bagged groceries & items to self-select. The clothing room is filled with gently used clothes.

• For more than two decades, New Connections has helped women get a fresh start, and worked toward a society where incarceration is rare, brief, and non-recurring. We operate Irma's Place (shelter for women) and Annie's Cottage (for women and children) in Tacoma's Hilltop. We work with other agencies to end homelessness in Pierce County and to break the cycle of poverty - homelessness - incarceration.

• Our Sisters' House provides education, advocacy, and support to people and families experiencing domestic violence. We offer culturally specific care for African American and Black victims and survivors as well. Also see Our Sisters' House on Instagram.

Human Rights

• The New Black Panther Party, Seattle-Tacoma Puget Sound works for ten demands, including decent housing, decent education, free health care, end to brutal policing, end to wars of aggression, justice for incarcerated people, and freedom from oppression.

• The Conversation 253 is a grassroots group of Tacoma and South Sound residents committed to building a diverse, critically engaged, social justice community for the task of procuring for ourselves and our communities a better life. With ‘Justice for All’ as its foundational principle, the group has two primary foci: providing encouragement and support for social justice activists; and promoting justice in such areas as legal system, wages, housing, healthcare, and education. Learn more at the History of The Conversation 253.

• LegallyBLACK. is dedicated to changing the narrative of Black & Brown people and providing effective methods to evoke change in local, state, and federal laws. We seek to eradicate racism and strengthen our communities by taking the concerns of the community directly to those in power and negotiate the amendment of local laws & policy to better protect all persons negatively impacted by systemic racism. From education, employment, housing, health care, economics, the judicial system, to policing, LegallyBLACK is focused on elevating BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) by fighting for equal access to resources and opportunities for a healthier, safer, and more prosperous life. Learn more at their Facebook page.

• Rainbow Center (RC) is the primary lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) referral and resource agency in Pierce County. Through education, advocacy, and celebration, Rainbow Center expands resources and safe space for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and allied (LGBTQA) community. Located in Tacoma, WA, we provide education, outreach, resources, information, and opportunities throughout the South Puget Sound region. Learn more at their Facebook page.

• South Sound Antiracist Project is building an active community of white people committed to understanding, adopting, employing and promoting anti-racist ideas, policies and actions in all their spheres of influence.

• Tacoma Fellowship of Reconciliation is a local peace-and-justice organization with a commitment to resolving conflict with nonviolence, respect, and care. It is affiliated with the Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation, National and International FOR. FOR began just before the start of World War I, as an outgrowth of a conference and has a history of supporting nonviolence and disciplined actions against injustice. Its members have been involved with civil and racial justice issues, citizen diplomacy, hosting training for building trust and active communication with those we disagree with, among others.

• As military veterans, Tacoma Veterans for Peace advocates for dispute resolution without war or violence between countries, and also advocates for veterans' issues. We work with others nationally and internationally to (1) increase public awareness of the causes and costs of war, (2) restrain our governments from intervening--overtly and covertly--in the internal affairs of other nations, (3) end the arms race, reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons, (4) seek justice for veterans and victims of war, and (5) abolish war as an instrument of national policy. Also see our national website.