Below are 10 grassroots organizations that are working to educate, raise awareness, and help people affected by the school to prison pipeline. All information and images are referenced from their respective organizational websites that are cited in the “Resources” page. Any additional information not found on the websites has been cited below and on the “Resources” page as well.

Save the Kids: From Incarceration
Emerged in 2009 but officially established as its own non-profit in 2011, Save the Kids (STK) is a volunteer-based organization comprised of individuals who are currently and were previously incarcerated or had family members that were and anybody else who would like to join the fight to end the school-to-prison pipeline (including lawyers, detention center administration, teachers, etc). They produce an array of annual events to raise awareness about the over incarceration of youth. These events include an Annual National Week of Action Against Incarcerating Youth and an annual Transformative Justice, Prison Abolition, and Anarchist Criminology Conference. In addition, STK has given a platform to the voice of many incarcerated people through the production of their Wisdom Behind the Walls blog where current and former prisoners can share their stories with the youth and outer world. These few examples are only a tip of the iceberg compared to everything they are doing to educate and share the stories of activists and help incarcerated youth and adults become their own activists. Learn more here.

ESTOPP: Eradicating the School-to-Prison Pipeline

ESTOPP which stands for eradicating the school-to-prison pipeline combines structural and philosophical solutions to support youth that have been funneled into the school-to-prison pipeline. ESTOPP was founded by a former educator who works closely with the Miami community most affected by the school-to-prison pipeline. While the organization is still growing, their main program, the Positive Peer Leadership Mentoring (PPLM) program, engages suspended, expelled, or incarcerated youth in active conversations that allow them to share their experiences and discuss what that means in a historical and political context as they work to develop solutions to the pipeline.  Learn more here.

Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC)

NOC is an organization that focuses on an array of issues that negatively impact communities of color, specifically poor communities of color. Many of the members come from the communities they are fighting for and thus are able to rally their communities together around campaigns for change, one of which being the school-to-prison pipeline. In partnership with the NAACP and students from St. Paul Central High School, the students led a rally called “Unchain Our Children” to express their anger towards unfair school practices that were causing many of their peers to be arrested instead of helped. Learn more about NOC here.

Youth United for Change (YUC)
YUC is a Philadelphia-based organization that brings together youth, particularly low-income youth, to develop their own campaigns targeted at improving the public school education system. A huge area of organizing for this group is the issue of the school-to-prison pipeline. From sharing their stories of how they and their school communities have been impacted by unnecessary school punishment and the criminalization of being poor, the worked to help publish two reports on zero-tolerance policies and students who have been pushed out of school through suspension and expulsion. Learn more here and check out their facebook page.

SpiritHouse: Inspiring, Connecting, Strengthening Communities

SpiritHouse is an artistic campaign that uses a diverse array of the arts to allow communities impacted by poverty, racism, gender discrimination, and the school-to-prison pipeline to find their voice and organize for change. Based in Durham, North Carolina, SpiritHouse began a book-study series about incarceration to allow community members a platform to analyze the facets of incarceration and the larger effect it has on their individual lives and collective community. Founded in the late 90’s by a group of artists, teachers, and activists, the members of this organization still carry their mission of providing writing and art workshops and programs for community members, giving the community a space to organize and heal. Learn more here.

Virginia Organizing
Virginia Organizing is a grassroots organization that brings people together from the local communities of Virginia to delve deeper in learning about the issues that affect their communities, but more importantly how they can use their voice to help their community move in a positive direction. In regards to the school-to-prison pipeline, parents have been organizing to work with the superintendents of their school districts and the local sheriff on how they can prevent school resource officers (police in schools) from unnecessarily arresting their children. Learn more about that campaign here and more about the organization as a whole here.

I Am An Educator
I AM AN EDUCATOR is a teacher-led grassroots movements based in Seattle, Washington that works to include teacher voice in dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline by speaking out against standardized tests, school closures, and the pressure for teachers to simply produce students with high test scores. In a campaign described as historic, many public high school teachers boycotted an infamous standardized test of Seattle called the Measure of Academic Progress which did more to hurt students than help (Hagopian, 2014). They succeeded in getting the test eradicated from high school curriculum and they are still working to remove it from elementary and middle schools. See the campaign here and learn more about their related work here.

Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC)
UYC is a student-led initiative that allows students from four NYC based youth organizations to come together and advocate for education reform, especially concerning the injustices of the school-to-prison pipeline. In the past few years, UYC has been diligently working on their Ending the School to Prison Pipeline and Get us to College campaigns where they have presented data and recommendations through reports and public demonstrations for the NYC Department of Education and the NYPD. Learn more about their work here.

 Dream Defenders
The organization Dream Defenders was born in response to Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012 that sparked national conversation around police brutality (Bailey, 2015). Dream Defenders has since grown to fight against mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline as seen in the way in which they helped a teenager brutally assaulted by a school resource officer get “resisting arrest” charges dropped and persuading local school county boards to change wording in policies that allow students to be disciplined for subjective behavior perpetuating the school-to-prison pipeline (Bailey, 2015). Click here to learn more about the organization.

Underground Scholars Initiative

Founded by two U.C. Berkeley students who had spent their younger years in prison, they worked together to create USI for current and prospective Berkeley students to bring together the academic subject of mass incarceration with people that have actually lived it (Cockrell, 2015). Through their organizing with currently incarcerated people they hope to develop a “Prison to School” pipeline. Learn more about their work here and here in the school’s newspaper.