Dream.Org

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 JUSTICE is a bipartisan effort to transform justice across the country. Over the past six years, we have built partnerships, relationships, and credibility across party lines that have led to passing critical criminal justice reforms at the federal and state levels, while centering policy around formerly and currently incarcerated people and their families. We have spent the past six years cultivating our Empathy Network–a powerful body of advocates who serve as our eyes, ears, and boots on the ground. These partners, the majority of whom are people formerly incarcerated, help us shape and advance our policy agenda in step with the needs of their communities.

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 local, state, and federal 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 three core ways–Communicate,Catalyze, Convene. The“three C’s” best utilize Dream Corps’s comparative advantage 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.

Dream Corps’ unique and intersectional mission and programming allows us to achieve impact effectively across both the fields of criminal justice reform and tech equity. Our staff expertise is a result of lived experience with these issues, which allows us to be on the forefront of innovating and creating new interventions. Dream Corps is uniquely positioned for success in this field because of our track record of building common ground with unlikely allies to achieve systems change, which differentiates us from others in the progressive movement. The credibility we have built across socioeconomic, racial, and party lines gives us a significant advantage.

Since the Dream Corps was founded by Van Jones in 2015, our approach has led to significant wins in criminal justice reform, environmental solutions, increasing diversity in the tech sector, and increased civic engagement to strengthen our democracy and stand up to hate. Accomplishments include:
– 80+ Black and Brown individuals began life-changing tech careers in paid roles through TECH’s Job Training Cohort corporate partnership model
– $200K in scholarships awarded to Black and Brown talent to advance their careers in the tech sector
– 20,000+ individuals freed from federal prison due to JUSTICE’s work to support the passage of the First Step Act
– 30,000+ women in 15 states with increased access to healthcare and protections from abuse through the JUSTICE Dignity For Incarcerated Women campaign
– $55.5B in federal funding for low-carbon transit infrastructure projects secured through recovery bills through Green For All’s #FuelChange campaign
– Disseminated a Green For All policy toolkit to 1,500 state legislators on how to effectively and equitably price pollution to fund solutions and uplift communities.