Grassroots & Community Organizing at JC Legal Resources Center, INC.

What’s at Stake for Our Community:

The stakes for our community are incredibly high. Milwaukee’s 53206 ZIP code is one of the poorest and most disenfranchised in the city. Our community suffers from:

Environmental Racism
Residents live in neighborhoods burdened by pollution, toxic waste sites, and poor air quality, which significantly affect their health and quality of life.
Housing Insecurity
With a lack of affordable housing, residents often face displacement or live in unsafe, deteriorating conditions.
Systemic Racism
Black and Brown communities are often excluded from policy discussions and decision-making processes that directly affect their lives, perpetuating cycles of poverty and disenfranchisement.

These inequities continue to limit opportunities for our community, trapping individuals in poverty and preventing them from accessing the resources and opportunities they need to thrive.

What We Hope to Achieve:

Our goals are to:

Retrofit 10+ properties in Milwaukee with clean energy technologies, providing affordable, healthy, and sustainable housing for local families.
Mobilize over 500 residents to engage in direct action campaigns that demand environmental justice and racial equity in local policies.
Increase voter engagement and participation by at least 25%, ensuring that marginalized communities have a voice in the policies that affect their lives.
Create 100+ local green jobs through the retrofitting initiative and sustainability projects.

Progress and Challenges:

So far, we’ve made significant progress in securing funding for our green energy retrofitting projects and have begun organizing in the 53206 ZIP code for more community involvement. However, funding challenges, political opposition, and structural barriers to policy change remain significant hurdles.

We are working to overcome these barriers by expanding our coalition of allies, increasing our grassroots support, and continuing to advocate for equitable solutions at all levels of government. We recognize that the work is long-term and requires sustained effort, but we are committed to creating lasting change and building a more just, equitable, and sustainable future for our community.

Our organizing campaigns are about building power, amplifying voices, and demanding justice. The funding from this program will allow us to scale these efforts, support more community leaders, and make our vision of environmental and social justice a reality.

Organized Campaigns

Community-Led Housing Justice Campaign

Our primary grassroots organizing campaign focuses on housing justice, specifically addressing the lack of affordable, healthy, and sustainable housing in Milwaukee’s predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have long been subject to disinvestment, environmental degradation, and exclusion from city planning decisions.

Over the next two years, we will work to expand our green housing retrofit initiatives. This project retrofits vacant, abandoned, or underutilized properties to transform them into energy-efficient, affordable housing units powered by solar energy, geothermal heating, and other clean energy solutions.

Through this campaign, we are not only addressing housing insecurity but also combating environmental racism by providing residents with cleaner, healthier living environments. The community will be involved in every stage of the process, from planning to implementation, ensuring the solutions are shaped by the needs and priorities of local residents. Additionally, the campaign will create local green jobs, which will empower residents economically while contributing to sustainability.

Environmental Justice and Green Jobs Campaign

We are committed to empowering our community to take direct action in confronting environmental injustice, particularly the impact of toxic pollution and climate change in the 53206 ZIP code and surrounding neighborhoods. The environmental justice campaign aims to push for stronger environmental policies and regulations at both the local and state levels to protect our community from the effects of environmental harm.

We are organizing community members to advocate for clean air, water, and energy while ensuring that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities are not disproportionately burdened by pollution or left out of climate resilience initiatives. The creation of green jobs through retrofitting and other sustainability projects is central to this work, as it not only addresses environmental concerns but also fosters long-term economic empowerment for community members.

Racial Equity and Civic Engagement Campaign

A key part of our organizing work involves ensuring that Black and Brown communities are not excluded from decision-making processes related to environmental policy, housing, or economic development. Our civic engagement campaign works to increase voter turnout, engage people in policy discussions, and ensure that our communities have a direct influence on the decisions that affect their lives.

We provide community members with the tools, resources, and training to organize their neighborhoods and advocate for policies that advance racial equity. By engaging directly with local government officials and challenging institutional barriers to equity, our campaign seeks to dismantle systemic racism at the local level.