PLANTING JUSTICE
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Mission Statement
the mission of pj is to empower people impacted by mass incarceration and other social inequities with the skills and resources to cultivate food sovereignty, economic justice and community healing
About This Cause
At Planting Justice, we are a grassroots organization with a goal to empower people impacted by mass incarceration and other social inequities one garden at a time. It all started when our co-founders, Gavin Raders and Haleh Zandi, reflected on their years of activism and realized there was a severe need to create solutions to the societal ills of food inequalities and everyday injustices. The answer: build a local, sustainable, and accessible food system that creates thousands of jobs for those who have been previously incarcerated. Notable Achievements Founded in 2009 in Oakland CA, PJ’s mission is to empower people impacted by mass incarceration and other social inequities with the skills and resources to cultivate food sovereignty, economic justice, and community healing. PJ’s seven (7) innovative and highly integrated programs generate a significant portion of its $5 million/yr+ operating income and support 55 full-time staff members, including 30 formerly incarcerated people, with full-time living-wage jobs in urban farming, nursery production/management, ecological landscaping, community education, and peer mentorship that position them as change makers in their communities. PJ is unique because of its internal social and nonprofit management innovations, including a democratically elected Executive Leadership Council, a democratically elected Peace Council, transparent pay-schedules, and self-managing programs that make all of their own operating decisions. A majority of PJ’s staff, staff Leadership Council, and 20-person Board of Directors are people of color and low-income. Some of our most notable achievements include: -- Accessing long-term land tenure on more than 16 acres in the nation’s most difficult real estate market to design and build transformative Equitable Food-Oriented Development projects with social and economic infrastructure that will benefit the community for multiple generations -- Running the largest urban farm in the region (4-acre El Sobrante farm), with more than 800 varieties of fruit trees and other edible+medicinal perennials -- Running the continent’s most biodiverse organic mail-order fruit tree nursery 150’ from our future aquaponics farm site, with a globally significant plant collection totalling more than 1500 varieties of trees. Nursery sells nearly $500,000 in product/year, shipping approximately 25,000 fruit trees/shrubs across the continental U.S. each year -- Designing/installing 650+ edible gardens through its Transform Your Yard program, including 150 free/sliding scale Community Justice Garden Hubs at schools, places of worship, apartment complexes, transitional housing centers, senior living facilities, and other low-access, high-impact community areas, since the organization’s founding. -- Impacting 7,000 at-risk youth and adults/year through educational programs at 8 public schools, 3 prisons, 3 juvenile detention facilities, and on PJ’s various farms/sites. -- Providing up to 80 paid youth internships per year, beginning at $17.50/hr, with wrap-around supportive services, given that the youth who are referred to Planting Justice already have significant trauma and personal challenges and are at high risk for experiencing violence and incarceration -- Recruiting more than 30,000 individual donations and 1,500 monthly sustainers via PJ’s Grassroots Canvass team, which initiates 20,000+ conversations per year in the community about food justice, alternatives to mass incarceration, and opportunities to advocate and support these movements through both policy change and grassroots community action. -- Assets include title to 3 properties (2 acre nursery in East Oakland, 3-acre (future) aquaponics farm in East Oakland, and 1.3 acre “pay-what-you-can” cafe, retail nursery and gathering space (called the Good Table) in El Sobrante, and long-term leases for PJ’s 4-acre El Sobrante Farm and 5-acre Sacramento nursery (in pre-development, owned by the City of Sacramento -- All programs are led by people most impacted by systemic violence, structural economic and social oppression, and mass incarceration -- Growing organizational budget to $5m+/year with 55 full-time staff, including 30 formerly incarcerated people. -- Only 2 out of the 75 formerly incarcerated people who have served as full-time staff at PJ over the past 13 years have gone back to jail/prison on a new charge = less than 3% recidivism rate While we’ve made great strides in our efforts to provide skills and resources to formerly incarcerated folks, such as building over 600 edible permaculture gardens in the Bay Area, and paying an avg of $28 hourly wages ($10.0 higher than the average) to 55 full-time staff, we need your help to continue pursuing our mission. Your support is key to helping Planting Justice create accessible food equality. With structured programs for food justice education, holistic reentry from prison, permaculture landscaping teams, urban farms and training centers, Planting Justice has the ability to reshape communities, and permanently course correct years of food insecurity and socio-economic disparity. To be able to continue our impactful work, we must rely on donors such as yourself to help to accelerate the work we do. With the launch of our 2025 New Growth Giving Campaign, our $3 million goal allows the team to continue growing Planting Justice initiatives such as: Building a 3-acre aquaponics cooperative incubator farm in the lowest income neighborhood in Oakland, which will produce over 170,000 pounds of organic produce each year, create 15 living-wage jobs, and incubate a network of worker owned aquaponics farms throughout East Oakland and beyond. Create more living-wage jobs for long-term residents of our community in Sobrante Park, on five acres in the heart of Deep East Oakland Develop emergency re-entry housing for staff & community members deprived of safe housing Open a first of its kind “Pay What You Can Cafe”, called The Good Table, to bridge the gap between sustainable food and accessibility Today, Planting Justice provides a window into a world of food sovereignty and the impact we could make as a community. We appreciate any amount you can contribute.