Grassroots Leadership founder Si Kahn got his start as a young activist and organizer in the Southern Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Si founded Grassroots Leadership in 1980 as a resource and training center for social justice organization building. Initially based in North Carolina, Grassroots Leadership worked throughout the South to help build progressive, multi-racial organizations to build power and create just organizations. Grassroots Leadership was one of the few organizations in the 1980s and 1990s to articulate in the board bylaws that no less than half of the board would be women and no less than half would be People of Color.
In 1990, Grassroots Leadership spearheaded the Community Assets Campaign looking at the privatization of public resources as one of the phenomena rolling back many of the gains that the civil rights and labor movements had made in the 1960s and 1970s. The campaign initially focused on four forms of privatization — education, healthcare, water & utilities, and prisons. Recognizing the rise of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on African American communities, the campaign ultimately shifted to hone in on the private, for-profit prison industry and the fight against corporations profiting from the imprisonment of human beings.
The first private prison in the U.S. was an immigrant detention center in Houston, Texas, operated by the Corrections Corporation of America called The Houston Processing Center. The building was built from the remains of an abandoned motel.
From this inauspicious start, private prisons would become a multi-billion dollar industry, with large corporations vying for contracts to lock up people at the federal, state, and local levels.
Federal contracts for “civil” immigrant detention remain the cash cow of the prison industrial complex. But these companies and others continue to make inroads into state prisons, family detention, and an expanding array of “services” for surveillance and control of human beings.
Today, Grassroots Leadership is a nationally recognized civil and human rights organization based in Austin and Houston, Texas, fighting to end prison profiteering and reduce reliance on criminalization through direct action, organizing, research, and public education.
One day, we envision a safe and healthy city, state, and world where people have agency over their lives and are not interrupted by prison profiteering, mass incarceration, deportation, and criminalization.
Build power in communities
Change policies and practices of mass incarceration and deportation
Transform the narrative of criminalization
Build a healthy equitable organization that allows us to achieve our goals
Grassroots Leadership founder Si Kahn got his start as a young activist and organizer in the Southern Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Si founded Grassroots Leadership in 1980 as a resource and training center for social justice organization building. Initially based in North Carolina, Grassroots Leadership worked throughout the South to help build progressive, multi-racial organizations to build power and create just organizations. Grassroots Leadership was one of the few organizations in the 1980s and 1990s to articulate in the board bylaws that no less than half of the board would be women and no less than half would be People of Color.
In 1990, Grassroots Leadership spearheaded the Community Assets Campaign looking at the privatization of public resources as one of the phenomena rolling back many of the gains that the civil rights and labor movements had made in the 1960s and 1970s. The campaign initially focused on four forms of privatization — education, healthcare, water & utilities, and prisons. Recognizing the rise of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on African American communities, the campaign ultimately shifted to hone in on the private, for-profit prison industry and the fight against corporations profiting from the imprisonment of human beings.
The first private prison in the U.S. was an immigrant detention center in Houston operated by the Corrections Corporation of America. The Houston Processing Center was built from the remains of an abandoned motel. From this inauspicious start, private prisons would become a multi-billion dollar industry, with large corporations vying for contracts to lock up people at the federal, state, and local levels. Federal contracts for “civil” immigrant detention remain the cash cow of the prison industrial complex. But these companies and others continue to make inroads into state prisons, family detention, and an expanding array of “services” for surveillance and control of human beings.
Today, Grassroots Leadership is a nationally recognized civil and human rights organization based in Austin, Texas, fighting to end prison profiteering and reduce reliance on criminalization and detention through direct action, organizing, research, and public education.
Today, Grassroots Leadership is an Austin and Houston Texas-based national social justice organization working to end the government’s use of for-profit prisons and reliance on mass incarceration, detention, and deportation policies.
We make up a beautifully diverse group of lived experiences reimagining a community without policing. Building spaces within our organization to learn from one another and remember that we are all learning to heal and develop abolition forward thinking.
Our programs are fueled by our memberships, which consist of lived experiences and allyship, who work together to organize strategic campaigns throughout Texas.
The resources and tools learned at Grassroots Leadership support our members and former staff to join national organizations, become board members, build legislation, speak at public hearings, and beyond.
If you want to learn more about our campaigns and want to help amplify the issues of people affected by mass incarceration, detention, and deportation policies in our country, visit our campaigns tab to get more involved!