The Gathering For Justice
The Gathering for Justice was founded in 2005 by Harry Belafonte after he witnessed a news report of a 5-year-old black girl being handcuffed and arrested in her Florida classroom for “being unruly”. The Gathering’s mission is to build a movement to end child incarceration while working to eliminate the racial inequities in the criminal justice system that enliven mass incarceration.
From its inception, The Gathering provided a safe environment for policy and model exchange, and dialogue between generations of activists, community members, formerly-incarcerated individuals, gang members and academics from all communities and cultures. In order to facilitate these intergenerational conversations, The Gathering enlisted tactical support from The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the youth divisions of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP, and the Congress on Racial Equality, among others.