Arise for Social Justice and Growing a New Heart are excited to announce our upcoming 5-part webinar series titled ‘The Labor of Becoming We the People’

This series is a continuation of Growing A New Heart’s We the People Are campaign. It centers lived experience, sharp analysis, and honest conversation about how we become a ‘we,’ not by bypassing difference, but by working through it with more love, accountability, and imagination.

From Blackness across borders to kinship mind in transformative work, to undoing whiteness in systems of care, to joyful discernment and dangerous acts of solidarity, this series brings together stories, practices, and questions for anyone committed to justice and community healing!

Each session is pay what you can, with a recording available for up to 30 days.

Arise for Social Justice: Four Decades of Grounded Resistance

Arise for Social Justice was founded in 1985 by women on welfare who dared to speak truth to power. What began as a grassroots welfare rights group quickly evolved into a broader movement for poor people’s rights and the collective fight against all forms of systemic oppression. From the very beginning, we have planted ourselves firmly in Springfield’s inner city—among the communities most impacted by poverty and injustice—taking on the issues that hit hardest where resources are few and inequities run deep.

Today, Arise remains a member-led, community-powered organization committed to defending and advancing the rights of poor and working-class people. Our work spans housing and homelessness, criminal justice reform, environmental justice, and public health—because the systems that harm us are interconnected, and so is our response.

Our mission is simple yet radical: to educate, organize, and unite low-income people to understand and claim our rights; to build collective power and push for structural change; and to ensure that those most impacted are leading the fight. We believe in meeting people where they are—emotionally, materially, politically—and walking alongside them as they move from crisis to clarity, from surviving to thriving. At Arise, social justice isn’t just a cause. It’s a way of life. And the work continues until all of us are free.

All politics are LOCAL AND ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES!

ARISE IS 40, FIERCE and FIGHTING FASCISM!

For 40 years, Arise for Social Justice has been rooted in the power of poor and working-class people organizing for dignity, equity, and systemic change. What began in 1985 with a group of women on welfare speaking out has grown into a bold, member-led movement challenging injustice in all its forms—from housing and homelessness to environmental racism and police violence. We’ve stood on the frontlines, not just demanding change, but creating it—one campaign, one voice, one victory at a time. This year, we celebrate four decades of grassroots resistance, collective power, and unwavering commitment to our community. Join us in honoring our past, lifting up our present, and fueling the future of justice—because the fight isn’t over, and the best is yet to come.

Our 2025 Reading List

Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler

DIAGNOSING WHITENESS & ANTI-BLACKNESS: WHITE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS, AND TRAUMA IN AMERICA – Dante King

Federal Anti-Indian Law The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples – Peter P. d’Errico

The Message – Ta-Nehisi Coates

Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation Marcus Anthony Hunter

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson

Palestine : Peace, Not Apartheid – Jimmy Carter

The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump

They Were Her Property – Stephanie Jones-Rogers

Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color – Michael R. Fischbach

Black AF History – Michael Harriot

Unsettling Truths The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of The Doctrine of Discovery –  Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah​

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