Senior Community Organizer

Senior Community Organizer

Essie Justice Group (Essie) is building grassroots power to dismantle the US incarceration system, the most egregious creator of racial and gender injustice of our time. We are a loving and powerful community of women with incarcerated loved ones. Our community includes cisgender women, transgender women, formerly incarcerated women, gender expansive people, elders, and young people.

After eleven years of building an active membership across California and beyond, Essie is deepening its base-building and leadership development strategies with the 1 in 4 women with incarcerated loved ones to propel bold decarceration agendas across the nation. We seek to transform the criminal legal system and create a Black feminist future rooted in care, equity, community safety, and liberation.

Essie is waging ever more ambitious campaigns to divest from state-sponsored punitive control and invest in structures that support the self-determination, freedom, and dignity of Black women and gender nonconforming people. In a period of continued organizational growth, Essie seeks a people-oriented, adaptable, and highly motivated Senior Community Organizer to join us in building and implementing campaigns to upend systems of control and confinement.

The Senior Community Organizer brings clarity to organizing strategy, rigor to tracking member engagement, and deep care to building a strong and connected membership base. They recruit women with incarcerated loved ones into Essie's political home and steward their continued participation through meaningful organizing opportunities, leadership pathways, and campaign involvement. Building strong, relational connections with members, they get to know individuals' strengths, stories, and interests in order to support their leadership in committees, advocacy efforts, and public actions.

They track participation trends, analyze engagement data, and use these insights to strengthen retention and organizing strategy. Working cross-functionally, they manage organizing projects, create member- and partner-facing materials, and help ensure our organizing work advances Essie's campaign priorities and builds the political power of families impacted by incarceration.

• Recruit women with incarcerated loved ones to join our membership and use effective techniques in relational organizing to continuously engage and create a political home for our members.
• Implement campaign tactics (direct actions, press conferences, rallies, meeting with electeds, etc.) in a way that is aligned with the overall campaign strategy.
• Analyze trends in member participation, campaign outcomes, and community engagement to make actionable recommendations for program improvement and growth.

• 3-4+ years of experience in organizing (community-based, issue-based, electoral, and/or labor); previous experience in decarceration advocacy a strong plus.
• Commitment to supporting the leadership of women and gender expansive people with incarcerated loved ones and our families.
• Excellent time-management, organizational, and event-planning skills.
• Effective writing, editing, and verbal communication skills.
• Track record as a collaborative team player who excels in managing multiple projects and is comfortable working in a fast-paced and non-traditional work environment.
• Adept with Mac operating systems, Google Suite, and MS Office Suite (especially Excel, PowerPoint, and Word).
• Commitment to the beliefs and values of Essie with a demonstrated passion for progressive politics, specifically in gender justice, race justice, and ending mass incarceration.

• Connecting with others is your superpower. You find tremendous joy in building relationships and…