Dream Corps

Generations of systemic racism has taken a sledgehammer to the freedom, health, and wealth of Black and Brown Americans. Our three programs work in concert to undo this damage by closing prison doors and opening doors of opportunity:
Dream Corps #cut50 drove forward the one truly bipartisan win for Black and Brown communities in the Trump era. We are a bipartisan effort to cut crime and incarceration across all 50 states. We bring together system-impacted leaders with unlikely allies to push for policing and criminal justice solutions.
There is growing awareness that our criminal justice system inflicts violence on communities of color while costing too much and failing to reduce crime. We are currently working on bipartisan legislation to reform policing, while amplifying the voices of Black and Brown communities who note that policing reform is just the start. We continue to lift up solutions to scale back mass incarceration and free up resources for community investments, reducing crime and recidivism. We focus on solutions that appeal to conservatives who value liberty, as well as progressives who value justice.
Dream Corps Green For All began with the dream that millions of Black and Brown youth would land in green jobs, not jails. Today, we fight for a world that is green for all, not green for some. We work at the intersection of the racial justice, economic, and environmental movements to advance solutions to poverty and pollution.
Our society has over-invested in criminal justice and dirty fuels, and under-invested in communities of color. Environmental racism means these communities suffer the most from pollution and the climate crisis, while benefiting the least from the growing clean economy. We advocate for strong, resilient, and healthy neighborhoods through policy work that ensures as the clean economy grows, it brings good jobs, better health, and opportunity to impacted communities. We are currently advocating for state and local clean-transit solutions and for federal response measures that prioritize clean-energy investments in communities of color.
Dream Corps Tech was born in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin to undo the racist image that Black youth in hoodies are dangerous, while young white men in hoodies are potential tech leaders. We’re a national program cultivating future leaders and entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds and creating a pipeline of diverse talent that will shift the culture of the tech sector.
The systemic racism baked into our economy leaves Black and Brown Americans disproportionately trapped in low-wage jobs, despite their talent and creativity. Experts also warn of the potential new, high-tech manifestations of prejudice and algorithmic discrimination. We work to counter these trends in partnership with industry leaders who recognize the need to diversify their workforce. We empower and train untapped talent from underrepresented communities to enter the technology-fueled economy.

To orient people to our work and bring them into our vision for the future, we focus on excellence in threecore ways–Communicate,Catalyze, Convene. The“three C’s” best utilize Dream Corps’s comparativeadvantage in the field.

Communicate: We tap into the genius that already exists in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods and use our platform to amplify these voices and normalize these ideas, needs, and solutions.

Catalyze: We create and seek out the brightest ideas and most innovative solutions and then cultivate and elevate them, creating movements to take the country from where we are to where we want to be.

Convene: We bring leaders from different backgrounds and issues to the table for strategic collaboration, idea sharing, innovation, and creative solutions.

We organize actions and mobilizations that generate media coverage, changing hearts and minds, and raising the necessary resources to take further action. This cycle of mobilization, media, and money drives the growth strategy behind our campaigns.

The Dream Corps brings people together—including very unlikely allies—to create a better future for all. We work to close prison doors and open doors of opportunity. While always acknowledging the “battle ground” issues that divide us, we focus on the “common ground’ solutions that unite us.

Dream Corps works for cultural change that can drive policy change. We focus on the people and communities most affected by social, environmental, and economic injustice. We lift up their voices and help them tell their stories. And we use our communications savvy to create new narratives that change the terms of public debate.

Our approach has already yielded results. We helped create the bipartisan coalition that delivered “the most significant changes to the criminal justice system in a generation” through passage of the FIRST STEP Act, even though it was widely expected that the Trump administration would instead double down on the regressive policies fueling mass incarceration.

What no one thought was possible, Dream Corps made happen through its strategy of building empathy to heal divides and uplifting the voice and experience of directly impacted communities to inform policy solutions. We believe our approach can be used to solve other critical problems that have been widely dismissed as unsolvable. For example, we see the potential to bring together people from across the political spectrum in support of building a green economy that lifts people out of poverty.

Through the breadth of our relationships, we are well-positioned as connectors between the grassroots and the grasstops. Our campaigns are led by those who have deep and personal ties to the issues we are working to address. Our National Directors come from communities living on the frontlines of pollution, the community of formerly incarcerated or directly impacted people, and other traditionally marginalized communities. Yet as an organization founded by Van Jones, we have a media savvy and a platform unparalleled by others in the social justice field. We have access to networks of influencers and supporters across the corporate, media, and political sectors, who play a critical role in amplifying our community-based messaging. This unique position allows us to bring leaders from different backgrounds and issues to the table for idea sharing, innovation, and creative solutions. As conveners, we ensure that this country’s reform efforts have a bottom-up and top-down approach and a bipartisan approach, which we believe is key to creating lasting change.

By developing community-based, bi-partisan movements that drive cultural and political change, we can help restore the fabric of civil society and strengthen democratic norms in the US.

Our approach has already yielded results. We helped create the bipartisan coalition that delivered “the most significant changes to the criminal justice system in a generation” through passage of the FIRST STEP Act, even though it was widely expected that the Trump administration would instead double down on the regressive policies fueling mass incarceration.

We believe our approach can be used to solve other critical problems that have been widely dismissed as unsolvable. For example, we see the potential to bring together people from across the political spectrum in support of building a green economy that lifts people out of poverty.

Helped build common ground between liberals and conservatives to pass the 2018 First Step Act, whose reforms have brought 14,000+ men and women home from federal prison

Empowered system impacted women to lead Dignity for Incarcerated Women reform campaigns, increasing protections for more than 30,000 thousand women in 12 states vulnerable to abuse while behind bars

Connected more than 3,500 formerly incarcerated or directly impacted leaders to training resources through our Empathy Network - giving them the skills they need to lead the reforms that matter most in their communities
Recruited, trained, and placed 24 men and women of color in full-time tech jobs following completion of our TECH job training cohort program- with $70k - $90k average starting salary

Secured millions of dollars in scholarship funding for technical training programs for underrepresented youth, to be disbursed over the next 3 years

Mobilized hundreds of environmental justice advocates to shape a regional transportation policy that prioritizes equity in the East Coast/Mid-Atlantic,

Launched a Climate Storytelling Academy to train leaders from communities on the frontlines of pollution on strategic communications and messaging

Uplifted the importance of expanding public transit to reduce our nation’s carbon emissions, and how to do it safely during a pandemic