I work with a wide variety of organizations around the country engaged in progressive law and politics, street art, and grassroots organizing. Here's a short list of those I'm most closely involved with.
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee is a national grassroots organization dedicated to building a transpartisan popular movement to restore the rule of law and civil liberties eroded by the war on terror. The organization addresses warrantless surveillance, arbitrary detention, torture with impunity and the executive secrecy that pervades each of these policy areas. Opportunities abound to support our work -- either through your volunteer time or tax-deductible contribution -- so if you're interested in helping defend the Constitution, please contact us.
The DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency is an arts & activism crew I founded that's been rocking the nation's capital since 2003. We rock socially conscious performance art in public, taking over parks, street corners and high-traffic zones to share poetry & percussion to protect the peace. Before kickstarting the DC crew, I helped launch the SF Collaborative Arts Insurgency, as well as the Stanford Spoken Word Collective.
The Resistance Media Collective is a grassroots crew of media activists I helped bring together to engage the press during the Counter-Inaugural protests greeting President Cheney's second term in January 2005. The group continues to promote peace, global economic justice and ecological sustainability by training activists on how to most effectively address the press, and organizing media outreach for grassroots groups from time to time.
ShantiSalaam is my first international arts & activism project. We're a crew of South Asian-American artists from various faith traditions who went on a 2-month, 13-city tour through India, Pakistan and Kashmir in the winter of 2006-07. We performed and facilitated workshops with young people to help build Hindu-Muslim harmony.
The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS), which I served for nearly three years as Associate Director for Communications & Outreach. It's a network of lawyers, law students, scholars, judges, policymakers and other concerned individuals working to ensure that fundamental principles of human dignity, individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, and access to justice enjoy their rightful, central place in American law. The organization has nearly 200 local chapters across the country, organizes discussions and debates and insightful analysis addressing emerging issues in law & policy, and also maintains a thoughtful blog.
The Belmont House, a diverse intentional community of progressive activists and artists in Washington, DC I helped recruit since 2005. We host film screenings, meetings and fundraisers for progressive activist groups, mad crazy house parties, and activists passing through DC who need a place to crash.
The Washington Peace Center, one of the oldest peace & justice organizations in the U.S.: a member-driven organization that hosts public educational events, compiles and distributes frequent "activist alerts," as well as an independent newspaper called The Peace Letter and a blog.
