Replicating the Hustle: Institutionalizing Justice-Impacted Brilliance and Development in Community Organizing

A presentation from 2022–2023 Joint HRI–HLS Visiting Practitioner Brittany White

Community organizing is the art of building people power. This people power has a myriad of goals but should always be grounded in making a life of dignity accessible to everyone. Engaging in this practice through the experience of justice-impacted people—persons who themselves have been in the criminal legal system—offers an intricate lens into the flaws of the existing legal system. Community organizing is not activism. It is an orientation that requires training, support, and apprenticeship. Brittany White is mapping out phases of an institute that would train justice-impacted people to organize in their communities.

White is a visiting practitioner in residence at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, an organizing fellow at the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, and a voice for formerly incarcerated Black women. As an organizer, strategist, and trainer, she ensures that women and their unique experiences in the American penal system are not erased from conversations around or solutions to gun violence and mass incarceration.

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