Building Community Power Cultivating Community Solutions Catalyzing Community Transformation Appendix
 

 the toolkit

This toolkit aims to be a companion resource for facilitators and bridgers in movement work, community leaders who are looking to deepen the practice of policy organizing, and collective governance, and policy-makers who are looking at how to do policy differently. This toolkit is by no means a “best practice” or the only resource available. Throughout the entire toolkit, you will find references and links to resources and processes of considerable value, led by community organizations that inform the work.

Simply, this toolkit offers a synthesis of some of the critical lessons learned around policy strategy and policy organizing in order to be a resource for those who are doing work around community-centered processes to create transformative change and to add to the many voices calling for a change of status quo, top-down policymaking.

This toolkit was synthesized from and informed by over a decade of work rooted in multiple perspectives and experiences across race, class, and gender within the United States. While it is the outcome of a collaboration of the three authors, this toolkit would not be possible if it weren't for the ideas and expertise of leaders and communities over generations. Insights and learnings that have shaped this process— and this toolkit— are informed by decades of brilliance by those who have seen the true value of community expertise, wisdom, and power.

 

 

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the constellation

 
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Simran Noor

Simran Noor (she/her) comes to racial, economic, and social justice work as a survivor of violence, experienced personally and systemically. Born into a Punjabi Sikh, Hindu, and Parsi family in New Delhi, raised outside of Baltimore, and based in New York, Simran’s latest endeavor is co-creating an NYC-based BIPOC Consulting Cooperative set to launch in mid-2021 and reflective of her interest in community building and solidarity economies. Simran is currently an interdependent consultant and coach. She focuses on personal power and resilience, strategy and organizational development, and movement building, with a focus on developing processes and setting clear outcomes to achieve racial justice and healing as a means to shift the ways systems, dehumanize, separate, and harm all people, particularly women and communities of color.

Read More about Simran!

She brings over ten years of experience working in and directly with impacted communities, developing policy and strategy, leading organizational change processes, and serving as staff within the philanthropic sector. Since starting NOOR Consulting in February of 2018, she has worked with numerous clients in various capacities. These include the American Medical Association, Career Rise, Community Change, Detroit People’s Platform, EMPLOY Youth Collaborative, Enterprise Community Partners, International Panel of Experts on Sustainability (IPES-Food), It Takes Roots, SPARCC, as well as a number of philanthropic organizations including Annie E. Casey, Chorus, Community Food Funders, Doris Duke, Jessie Smith Noyes, Kresge, MS, Nathan Cummings, Neighborhood Funders’ Group and the Surdna Foundation. She has facilitated events for business social impact programs including Sir Kensington’s and Adidas. Previously, Simran served as a Senior Fellow at Race Forward and (premerger) was Vice President of Policy and Programs at the Center for Social Inclusion and Deputy Director of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE).

Prior to joining CSI, Simran held various roles including as staff at the W.K. Kellogg and Annie E. Casey Foundation and as a middle school teacher and nonprofit leader in Baltimore City. Simran has written and commented for a variety of media including the Detroit Free Press, The Times-Picayune, The Hill, Aljazeera America, and City Limits Magazine. She also has been a featured panelist on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry. Simran holds a dual bachelor’s degree in American Studies and Political Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a dual master’s degree in Public Administration and Social Policy from the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves as a Project Team Member of the Building Movement Project and a Board member of Borealis Philanthropy and South Asian Americans Leading Together.

She is a proud member of Warriors for Embodied Liberation, a program of Universal Partnership (UP).

 

Anthony K. Rogers-Wright

Anthony K. Rogers-Wright (he/him) serves as the Director of Environmental Justice at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. Anthony has been influential in shaping policy and organizing strategy for the United Frontline Table and Green New Deal Network while facilitating alignment and movements towards a climate just platform for federal policy. Anthony brings over ten years of policy analysis, community organizing, and outreach/advocacy experience. While serving as a policy analyst for various environmental consulting firms in California and Colorado, he specialized in land use, Clean Air Act, and environmental justice compliance. He has used his organizing and outreach experience to advocate for a variety of social justice campaigns including environmental justice, affordable health care access, income inequality, and civil rights for LGBT citizens.

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Read More about Anthony!

In 2016, Anthony acted as a surrogate and policy advisor for the Sanders presidential campaign and testified on the need for increased action on climate justice to the DNC Platform Committee. In 2012, Anthony led the effort to make Colorado Health Insurance Cooperative the first health insurance provider in the State’s history to remove transgender health exclusions from all of its policies.

Anthony was selected as one of Grist.org’s 50 People You’ll Be Talking About in 2016 and as a participant in the Young Climate Leaders Network. He’s written numerous articles discussing the axiomatic nexus between the climate crisis and social justice, and spoken of this issue at universities throughout the United States and in Europe. Anthony earned his undergraduate degrees in Environmental Science and Policy and Jazz Composition as well as his graduate degree in Community Development, Environmental Science, and Public Policy, both from Clark University. Anthony serves on the Boards of Friends of the Earth Action Board and Evergreen Action. He is blessed to be the father of his energetic, entertaining, and VERY loquacious son, Zahir Cielo (aka “Bean”).

 
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Anthony Giancatarino

Anthony Giancatarino (he/him) is a father of three and rooted in Philadelphia, PA. Anthony is the Strategy Lead for the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy and has led the JCET project, for the last four years, working with community partners to create community-driven processes in policy development, strategy, and collective governance towards an anti-racist and regenerative economy. Anthony’s primary work has been through the lens of energy democracy, race, and policy. In this role, Anthony has co-designed and co-led participatory processes to develop community toolkits such as the Energy Democracy Scorecard and the Peoples Orientation to a Regenerative Economy, which helps provide shared analysis and political education materials to support community-driven solutions.

Read More about Anthony!

As part of the JCET work, Anthony provides policy and political strategy support with frontline communities, participatory program development, and evaluation design, and cultivates alignment efforts among communities, institutions, and other sectors within the movement. Anthony facilitates collective governance processes to support statewide efforts to address racism, extraction, and the urban-rural divide and city-wide efforts to address housing injustice, displacement by investing in-home repairs, equitable electrification, and affordable housing. Anthony partnered with the Solutions Project to co-design and lead a participant-driven and cultivated leadership program: the Fighter League.

Prior to this project work, Anthony spent over seven years working at the Center for Social Inclusion, fostering partnerships with frontline communities, organizations, and leaders in the Gulf South, New York, and across the nation to advance policy strategies to dismantle structural racism in energy and food systems while piloting models for transparency, participation, and accountability in governance. Anthony serves on the Boards of the Article 20 Network, Serenity Soular, and 100% Network. Anthony holds a dual bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Theology from the University of Scranton and a Master’s in Public Administration from New York University.

 

 

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 the wisdom

The wisdom within this participatory policymaking toolkit has been deeply influenced by many organizers, grassroots leaders, and community members across the country, particularly from the networks and organizations below. Please note, the list of organizations does not signal endorsement, rather these are organizations that have deeply influenced participatory processes over the years. We strongly encourage you to learn about, and, if you are able, support these organizations and efforts as you consider this toolkit.