Freedom Project

We seek to support the inherent power and ability in our community, which has been denied to us through the mechanisms of institutionalized racism and one of the most impactful manifestations of anti-Blackness: mass incarceration. Our work to eradicate anti-Blackness in ourselves, the community, and the non-profit industrial complex means that we prioritize relationships over resources, healing over change, and seeing people’s humanity no matter the circumstance. We carry these values into all the work we do. Currently, we focus on three critical community-directed responses:
-Provide direct support and fill gaps in housing resources in the community through culturally-relevant individual care coordination and systems navigation.
-Work to dismantle systems and policies that perpetuate racism and harm towards our community by challenging racially-biased narratives, sentencing policies, and legislation.
-Create spaces for healing from the impacts of mass incarceration, racism, trauma, and systems of oppression inside prison and in the community by providing a safe physical space to gather and ongoing healing workshops.

Our work is designed to be responsive, accountable, and beholden to our community. We disburse funds with reduced administrative hoops, flexibility, and a priority toward people who have historically fallen through the gaps of other support systems. However, we approach this work knowing it is not enough to simply send a resource someone’s way. Instead, we connect community members with wraparound support and social services once we have established relationships and trust, in an effort to address the full range of emotional, physical, and interpersonal needs of individuals and families. We are able to successfully navigate these systems because we have a lived understanding of the oppressive systems people face. We seek to co-create non-judgemental spaces where you don’t have to assimilate, where you don’t have to come in and walk and talk like the dominant culture, where you don’t have to apologize for being Black and being impacted. These healing services are consciously integrated into the support people receive from CARE Coordinators, as we know that we first need our survival needs met before we can deepen in our healing process.

Our approach is based on the Credible Messenger’s model, applied to the unique needs and experiences of our community. We provide direct support to people inside prison, families with an incarcerated loved one, people going through reentry, and youth and their families who are targeted by the incarceration system. We develop and facilitate groups for community healing, such as trauma-informed healing, anti-oppression, Compassionate Communication, and other community healing work.

Our approach to centering the local Black community throughout our organizational operations is entirely rooted in our lived experience and our commitment to an anti-oppression framework. We actively bring our own histories and traditions into our organizational culture. We honor our history, culture, and families by supporting our community from within. We bring this practice of centering our community to all aspects of our organization. We seek to challenge the nonprofit industrial complex and the ways in which white dominant culture can seep into how we show up. Freedom Project strives to operate from a non-hierarchical approach in which we make decisions collaboratively, have pay equity, and provide a living wage. Our hiring practices prioritize people who have the lived experience of being incarcerated and are from the communities most targeted by mass incarceration. Our processes have been directly designed and informed by community members, specifically people who identify as Black and have been impacted by incarceration. For example, Freedom Project’s Seattle Credible Allies Project was initiated by a member of our community who is currently incarcerated, and was designed in collaboration with him and others in the community.

Freedom Project is well-positioned for the work as a result of our lived experience, relationships, and research. First, we have the lived experience that is needed to envision community-based solutions to the issues we face. Our staff consists of 24 people - 75% Black, 8% API, 8% white, 4% Indigenous, 4% Latinx; and 92% of whom are impacted by incarceration (including folks who were sentenced as children and some who had been imprisoned for over 20 years). We understand the nuances of the legal, prison, and reentry systems and bring our lived experience to support our community. Second, we are community-centered, community-directed, and heavily invested in our relationships. Because we are in relationship with our community, community members are more comfortable bringing their authentic selves and experiences. We are also in relationship with organizations like United Better Thinking, Community Passageways, Progress Pushers, Rooted Reentry, Collective Justice and CHOOSE 180. These relationships provide space to continuously listen for ways to support what each other is doing, stay informed on what the community needs, and what resources are available. Finally, we bring research experience through our participation in the original research and reporting conducted under the “Racism as a Public Health Crisis Community Engagement Fund” with King County in 2020. We also participated in the Black Brilliance Research Project, where we supported a team of 30 community members to research the impacts of incarceration and policing, especially regarding health inequity and the wealth gap experienced by our community.

Freedom Project’s vision for the future is rooted in the brilliance and power of our community, which has been deeply harmed by the systemic racism of mass incarceration. We don’t believe people change; we believe they heal. As such, our envisioned role is to hold space, empathy, and resources for our community and community members to truly heal and thrive. By maintaining connection and providing the support (both tangible and intangible) needed to heal and gain stability, those we are in relationship with have a strong platform from which to share their power in our community - knowing that their humanity will be seen, embraced, and celebrated. In healing, we realize the inherent potential of transforming our communities by making that space available for others, empowering us to connect with our community in powerful ways, bringing our talent, brilliance and passion to act, fight, and work for our collective liberation. We approach this work knowing that resourcing and healing our community is crucial to ensure that systems change is grounded in the needs and strategies as identified by the community.

As we have grown, we’ve had to work hard to stay rooted in our values while navigating the nonprofit industrial complex, so that we don’t end up duplicating the very systems we seek to dismantle. We’ve been able to cultivate relationships and have powerful conversations with funders about the ways our community gets impacted by even the best intentions. For example, by bringing a trauma-informed framework that centers our community’s brilliance, we’ve been able to help funders change pre-existing policies (such as requiring background checks and formal assessments) that have historically caused harm. We also see wins in advocacy. For example, because of the advocacy work of our Beyond the Blindfold of Justice project, we convinced King County to streamline its cumbersome, laborious, and impactful process of filing for records expungement and refunds, helping to correct the devastating impact of bad laws enacted and executed during the “war on drugs.” In 2021, were invited to train all 400 staff and attorneys with the King County Department of Public Defense in racial equity and Compassionate Communication.

Freedom Project especially recognizes the weight of the “win” when community members reach out for support - simply when they call a CARE Coordinator. We know this means they feel safe and trust us enough to ask for support. For instance, our team helped to support a woman escaping a domestic violence situation. We connected her with permanent housing as well as supportive employment, so that she is able to continue caring for her young children. Another person who originally connected with us in a similar situation just recently got the keys to her own home! These are small wins on an individual level, that took our whole community to help make happen.