Our Mission

Restoring communities by Inspiring, Educating, and Empowering the people thru Music, Arts, Activism, and Leadership Development

What We Do

Music, Arts, Cultural Programing and Events, that perpetuate a spirit of Community Wellness, Social Entrepreneurship, Equity and Social Justice

Why We Do It

Music, Arts, Culture, and Storytelling has the power to Inspire & Spark Change, Uplift Narratives, and Create Opportunities for Equity, Empowerment, Unity and Healing

Our Team

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The Homies & Trusted Folks

Poor Magazine

POOR Magazine is a poor people led/indigenous people led, grassroots non-profit, arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, art, education and advocacy to silenced youth, adults and elders in poverty across Mama Earth.​

All of POOR's programs are focused on providing non-colonizing, community-based and community-led media, art and education with the goals of creating access for silenced voices, preserving and degentrifying rooted communities of color and re-framing the debate on poverty, landlessness, indigenous resistance, disability and race locally and globally.

Founded by Black Panther Auntie Frances Moore & Darnel Parks in 2009, Self-Help's mission is to build unity and self determination through care programs that provide food, cultural nourishment and support to North Oakland & South Berkeley residents.

We represent a collective of folks who live in the South Berkeley/North Oakland neighborhood and community. Some of us are without homes or shelter; some of us were born and raised in the area — but ALL OF US are simply drawn together BONDING WITH EACH OTHER. Regardless of our present state or economic status, WE COME TOGETHER (not always easy — but we do it)! We believe that the positive energy, the drive and a divine inspiration lead us to pull together as a unified community of SELF-HELP (each one help one) thus, we endeavor to provide HELP & SERVICES to individuals and families not merely to help them survive but to help them THRIVE!

Check out our care programs!

• Free hot Meals

• Quarterly "Public Land for Public Good" community celebrations and meals

• Monthly work parties in the Community at the Memorial Fruit Tree Orchard

• Free legal aid, rides to doctor's appointments/ hospitals, bureaucratic support

• Housing support (counseling, transitional, etc.)

• Job training and preparedness

ZEAL is a creative arts and social impact studio cooperative where we cultivate emergent creative community development strategies to own and steward the means of our cultural production.  Through our creative talent development, social impact studio practice, and creative placemaking we celebrate our lineages, assert our voices, archive our legacy, and showcase our artistic talents toward building community wealth across the Black diaspora.

Vallejo Housing Justice Coalition

At the Vallejo Housing Justice Coalition (VHJC), we believe that housing is a human right.

We envision a city with housing that is affordable and reflects the needs, diversity, and culture of our community. We fight for housing justice across race, culture, age, and sexual orientation. We prioritize and amplify the voices of the communities most directly impacted by harmful housing policies that have displaced and uprooted families, especially low-income families, immigrants, and people of color.

Our core strategies include:

• Tenant organizing to build the leadership and power of renters and fight evictions and displacement through workshops on tenant rights and support in forming tenant associations.

• Advancing community-controlled housing preservation strategies, such as community land trusts (CLTs), and other alternative land and housing models that stabilize communities, prevent renters from displacement, take land and housing off of the speculative market, and keep them permanently affordable.

Solano Unity Network

We support the liberation of all colonized prople, We believe community building through mutual aid and abolition based practices is the path to de-colonization. We believe ACAB.

Vallejo

Vallejo PD is one of the most corrupt, violent and deadly gangs in the so called united states. As abolitionists we center the directly affected’s demands for accountability. We call for the abolishment of the VPOA and VPD.

Fairfield

We make a hot meal and distribute during the same day and time once a week over time we’ve built a trusting relationship with our community and began to understand the immediate needs. We advocate for humanitarian rights of unhoused peoples, provide emergency assistance for extreme weather and multiple forms of harm reduction supplies.

Vacaville

Our work In Vacaville began by delivering groceries to the food insecure. Spending most of our time in the markham neighborhood we started to build a community by gardening in a once overgrown and forgotten community garden. The People’s Garden Vacaville is now a beautiful thriving radical space, Located at Rocky hilled and Holly in,

The Vallejo Arts Fund emerged from listening sessions and convenings with Vallejoans and is grounded in the belief that the city’s art is urgent and that resources need to be prioritized for communities that have historically been excluded from funding opportunities.  The Fund centers Black, Indigenous, People of Color artists, culture bearers, arts organizers, and their broader communities. In 2023, we distributed $501,500 to support arts & culture by Vallejoans.

OUR VALUES

The Vallejo Arts Fund respects and values Vallejoan artists and cultural bearers. The Fund is grounded in the voices of Vallejo’s diverse communities and their lived experiences as artists, culture bearers, and arts organizers. Many have shared the impacts of gentrification, exclusionary and racist practices, and the historical lack of support for culturally rooted arts and traditions in the city. Therefore, VAF values diversity, inclusion, and equity around race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, ability, socio-economic status, artistic genre, experience, and regional lived experiences. Just as important is VAF’s approach - we enter this opportunity with humility, centering respect for all, an environment of mutual learning, collective and deep relational practices, transparency, and action-based care. VAF recognizes that any new effort takes patience, time, and care.

WE BELIEVE

• We believe it is necessary for artists, culture bearers, and artist organizers from across Vallejo’s diverse communities to be included in the outreach, grantmaking, and decision-making processes.

• Artists, culture bearers, and artist organizers who reflect Vallejo’s rich cultural diversity are vital innovators who add tangible value to the city, and must be invested in, nurtured, and cultivated.

• Vallejo’s art is urgent and should be more widely funded across the city, particularly in communities at risk of displacement, to preserve cultural vibrancy and continuity.

• Local cultural ways of being, knowing, and creating ground the cultural practices and expansive artistic expressions that support community resiliency and self-determination.

• Vallejo artists have a right to accessible spaces to practice their artistic/cultural work locally and safely.

• The struggle is real.

Art.coop

Our aim is to connect cultural innovators across silos - popular arts educators, cultural organizers and creators, arts academics, economists, and grantmakers -  who do not know one another well, but are building the cultural economy we want. We need to socialize, study, and dream together before we can take collective action.

El Comalito Collective Cultural Arts Center is an art space that showcases underrepresented artists through a variety of media that spark consciousness. We create networks that build support and foster opportunities for marginalized voices through artworks that explore the intersections of (but not limited to) race, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and gender, through a decolonial lens.

Our Mission

Legal education, research, advice, and advocacy for just and resilient economies.

Mission: Sustainable Economies Law Center cultivates a new legal landscape that supports community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment. We provide essential legal tools - education, research, advice, and advocacy - so communities everywhere can develop their own sustainable sources of food, housing, energy, jobs, and other vital aspects of a thriving community.

Theory of Change

Neither our communities nor our ecosystems are well served by an economic system that incentivizes perpetual growth, wealth concentration, and the exploitation of land and people. Communities everywhere are responding to these converging economic and ecological crises with a grassroots transformation of our economy that is rapidly re-localizing production, reducing resource consumption, and rebuilding the relationships that make our communities thrive.

However, as new solutions for resilience emerge, many are running into entrenched legal barriers: laws originally designed to protect people from the ills of industrialism are now preventing many communities from growing and selling their own food, investing in local businesses, creating sustainable housing options, and cooperatively owning land and businesses.   

Sustainable Economies Law Center exists to bridge the gap in legal expertise needed to transition from destructive economic systems to innovative and cooperative alternatives. Our 10 programs work together in identifying key leverage points in our existing economic and legal systems, removing strategic legal barriers, and creating replicable models for community resilience. We work to:

Envision more just and resilient economic and legal systems;

Identify and advocate for public policies that remove legal barriers to resilient communities while maintaining and strengthening worker, consumer and environmental protections;

Empower community-based entrepreneurs and innovators to create replicable legal structures that will form the blueprints of the new economy;

Educate communities and law-makers about the potential of new economic strategies; and

Train the next generation of community-based lawyers to meet the burgeoning legal needs of resilient communities everywhere.