Public Policy Project

About Public Policy Project

The fundamental principle that drives the work of the Public Policy Project is embodied in the belief that it is those most affected by what is currently happening that have the greatest reason to invest in generating alternative outcomes.

When marginalized and oppressed people are directly involved as agents of change on their own mutual behalf they seed the conditions for a “sea change” in societal norms, which are intended to usher in a stream of new possibilities anchored in by the emergent leadership roles of the people who participate in the change process.

PPP uses a process that helps build collaborative power within and across communities of color and within organizations that work in communities of color with a high road bridging framework to guide all marginalized and oppressed peoples toward an equitable, inclusive and healthy future. To date PPP has trained over 1000 people nationally, have facilitated several community discussions and race dialogues, provided strategic planning, organization and non-profit board development, have been a lobbyist for community groups seeking to enact policies that impact the communities they work with, helped groups create policy agendas and developed training curriculums for various community organizations among other work.

PPP has created and conducted a variety of public policy and community leadership training programs that educate the African-American community, Native Nations, low-wealth communities, immigrants and people of color to understand and actively participate in the policy making processes that affect their lives and communities.

PPP believe that everyday people have far more power than they realize, too often allowing problems to fester, posing serious risks to our future. The great Alice Walker once said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” We place blind trust in representatives and too often have too little faith in our own capacity to create the futures we seek.

The Public Policy Project was born to transform this pattern. Transforming this pattern is particularly relevant as we reflect on the serious deep racial disparities in employment, income, education, housing, the criminal in-justice system and incarceration rates. We would do ourselves a disservice to ignore the fact that in 2018 we are living in a new Jim Crow era.

Until the African-American, Indigenous Nations, other black and brown people, the poor and marginalized organizes itself to both demand and promote justice, equity, equality and the death of the false ideology of white supremacy, it is not going to happen. Until we are able to develop a relatively sophisticated analysis of the interacting dynamics of the above mentioned demands we will fail to develop a clear enough and robust enough action plan that will generate the results we expect.

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