The Gathering for Justice, founded by Harry Belafonte in August of 2005, is a social justice organization dedicated to ending child incarceration and the racial inequities that permeate policing and the justice system. Belafonte and other veterans of our nation’s civil rights struggles has given us a chance to understand the past and move forward together to focus our collective resources on reforming the criminal justice system. The Gathering’s nonviolent methodology allows the organization and its partners to achieve success on legislative and policy, as well as personal levels. The Gathering finds success while building organic relationships with diverse communities, and engaging in dialogue with community stakeholders. The Gathering understands that this country doesn’t need another organization that talks about youth justice reform - we need a justice movement. The Gathering is the answer to the generational and racial schisms that have had many ideologically similar organizations working in isolation, instead of in the spirit of collaboration. The Gathering has always been rooted in that spirit and has had great success building meaningful and historic dialogues between disparate communities. The Gathering provided a safe environment for policy and model exchange, and dialogue between the generations of activists in all communities. In order to facilitate this intergenerational conversation, The Gathering enlisted tactical support from The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the youth divisions of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the NAACP and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) among others. The success of the first Gathering described above, led to years of historic gatherings including multi-day retreats in:
Epps, Alabama: The Gathering of the Youth and Elders. This region, which gave birth to the black resistance movement and civil rights mobilization efforts, became the launch of the idea of becoming a national movement;
Santa Cruz, CA: The Gathering of young people hosted by the Latino community. The young people, continuing the traditions of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker’s Movement, reinforced by the leaders and members of Barrios Unidos, expanded on the experience derived from Epps, Alabama;
Onondaga Nation, NY: The young people of this Indigenous nation along with their Chiefs and Clan Mothers focused the group on the history of the original peoples of the United States and provided the visiting youth with a deeper understanding of the need for common bonding between all groups;
Knoxville, TN: Convened at Alex Haley’s farm in Tennessee, young people gathered from the regions of Appalachia which gave the white community of coal miners and those victimized by justice miscarried, the opportunity to instruct all who were gathered about the commonality of class experience across racial line; and
Orange County, CA: Convened young leaders from the Asian and Pacific Islander communities put before the group thoughts and ideas that helped us understand the complexities and diversity of their community. Powerful parallels of their civil and human rights struggle in this country were revealed to all those in attendance. Regional Gatherings:
Partners of The Gathering hosted regional gatherings to provide a forum for local leaders to participate in the common goal of our organization: To coordinate efforts and build relationships with youth organizations to create a local agenda to end child incarceration. The following cities hosted regional gatherings:
Metro Washington DC
Birmingham, AL
Orange County, CA
Pittsburgh, PA
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Detroit, MI
And Albuquerque, NM
During the initial gatherings and discussions with The Gathering partners it was decided that a national convention was necessary. We convened over 1000 youth and elders representing 17 states in Oakland, CA for a three day conference in November of 2007. We collectively voted on 6 cities where The Gathering would dig deeper and offer support to the local organizing campaigns. This drove our work for the next 3 years organizing, providing training, capacity building and re-granting resources in Chicago, Illinois, Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania, Little Rock, Arkansas, Los Angeles, California, and Columbus, Ohio. In late 2010, The Gathering limited concentration on large-scale convenings and focused on programming around our long term goals. The Gathering restructured its organizational management, appointing noted national organizer Carmen Perez as Executive Director, and moving Ms. Perez and the organization’s creative core to New York City. In the last few years,
The Gathering has utilized the insight and lessons learned from its auspicious beginning to enter a coalition partnership with 1199SEIU, by building the union’s first young worker’s program, Purple Gold. With the close guidance of The Gathering, Purple Gold reflects the spirit of the movement and engages 1199SEIU members under the age of 35. Purple Gold is now active in 5 regions across the East coast. In 2012, in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s tragic death, the Dream Defenders were founded in Florida. In a number of weeks, the Dream Defenders went from a small group of college students speaking about the travesty of “Stand Your Ground” to local audiences, to a growing group of young people and their supporters gaining national and international attention as the faces of a justice revolution. The Gathering has provided ongoing training, leadership, organizational assistance and connections to media and celebrity. In the fall of 2013, The Gathering started a creative writing and music program inside the Horizons Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx, NY. Working with NYU professor and performance artist Bryonn Bain, the young participants at Horizons spent 16 weeks learning story-telling and writing – and culminated the program with a live performance in front of the entire population, staff and guards, along with Harry Belafonte and Commissioner Gordon (producer, The Fugees and others). Based on the undeniable success of the program, a new 8 week program – “The History of Hip Hop” – begins in May 2014 and will be co-run by noted artist Immortal Technique, with recording opportunities provided by Commissione Gordon’s Lalabela record label. Inspired by a call from Mr. Belafonte to build a platform for uncovering radical and sensible solutions for the current state of New York’s youth justice system, The Gathering has a new initiative called Justice League NYC. JLNYC is a group of leading juvenile justice activists and advocates who have formed a task force to produce a 3 day conference in the fall of 2014 –
Growing Up Locked Down (GULD). GULD will take place at The New School from Wednesday, September 24 – Friday, September 26, and include workshops, panels, teach-ins, film, performances, and importantly, youth-led programming. The goal of the conference will be to present a “white paper” of solutions to the de Blasio and Cuomo administrations and then bring the conference, and solutions, to a different city each year. The Gathering is the embodiment of the 21st specific philosophies and tactics and rooted in communities that are the hardest to reach. The Gathering strives to work around the generational, ethnic and socio-economic segregation present in our communities. Awakening our country’s moral conscience and strengthening our citizen’s resolve against the growing catastrophe of childhood incarceration and the all-too-common social unrest it creates in under-funded and developing socioeconomic areas, is central to The Gathering’s mission. The Gathering’s success will bring meaningful treatment for the criminal justice health of this nation. The United States holds tremendous promise as a country of great opportunity, but as long as America’s poor and disenfranchised are treated unjustly, the nation will never heal. The Gathering seeks to feed a new agenda of hope and equality for all, building upon the vital lessons of our mutual past.
