Detroit People’s Platform (DPP)

DPP is building a city where race and the priorities of majority black Detroit are centered. Their work advances racial and economic justice in the nation’s largest black majority city by organizing residents to create grassroots power and transform systems necessary to realize racial justice. Developing organizing tools for parents of young children, solidifying Detroit’s first community benefits ordinance, and advocating for equitable development practices are among DPP’s recent accomplishments. Currently, they are engaged in efforts to educate Detroiters about the upcoming local election and proposed revisions to the city’s charter.

Michigan Universalist Unitarian Social Justice Network (MUUSJN)

MUUSJN is a statewide advocacy network of 25 Unitarian Universalist congregations dedicated to creating a more just and caring world. The Network’s priority issues include voting/civic engagement, women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, and environmental and water justice. MUUSJN works with people from various faith groups and progressive organizations to engage in grassroots activism and legislative advocacy throughout Michigan, including the Upper Peninsula.

Mothering Justice

Mothering Justice is dedicated to empowering well-organized groups of mothers that can engage fellow mothers and law makers around a variety of issues affecting working families. Through family-friendly advocacy, leadership development, and voter involvement, Mothering Justice raises the voices of mothers and helps them become policy makers and shapers. The organization offers multiple leadership development opportunities for women interested in activism, statewide advocacy work, or becoming better allies to mothers of color. They also organize around earned paid sick time, affordable childcare, black maternal health, and basic needs.

Restaurant Opportunities Centers – Michigan (ROC-MI)

ROC-MI is a chapter of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a national nonprofit that works to improve wages and working conditions of restaurant industry workers by engaging them around shared goals and values aimed at raising their standard of living. Founded in June 2008 and based in Detroit, ROC-MI has more than 3,000 restaurant worker members and operates the COLORS Hospitality Opportunities for Workers (CHOW) Institute (a professional development program for restaurant workers) and a chapter of RAISE (Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards of Employment – a restaurant employer association)) ROC-MI also engages in workplace justice and issue campaigns focusing on racial equity, job protections, and living wages.

The Ezekiel Project (TEP)

TEP is a community organizing collective committed to Saginaw. Their goal is to empower people through organization, relationship building, skill development, education, and the belief in transforming communities using advocacy and activism. TEP convenes justice task forces focused on employment and fair wages, literacy and education equity, environmental health, access to health care, and criminal justice reform. Two community outreach groups perform this work: spiritual leaders from all faiths and youth, ages 13-24.

The Center for Community-Based Enterprise (C2BE)

C2BE’s mission is to build a sustainable, more equitable and inclusive living-wage local economy, by developing a cooperating network of worker-owned businesses and increasing the number of worker owners. We do this by creating people-centered businesses, cooperatives, and community-based, enterprises where worker-owners and members have a say in all financial and strategic decisions. We help owners sell their business to their employees and work to increase the number of black & brown worker-owners.