People’s Advocacy Institute

The organization’s executive director is Rukia Lumumba, son of former Jackson, Mississippi mayor Chokwe Lumumba and sister to Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D). ⁵

Background

The People’s Advocacy Institute (PAI) is a left-of-center activist and criminal justice reform group based in Jackson, Mississippi. The organization, which was created by former Jackson mayor Chokwe Lumumba and his daughter Rukia Lumumba, aims to provide people who have been impacted by “systemic violence” with the “tools to disrupt the criminal and juvenile punishment systems.” ¹

PAI aims to change the current criminal justice system and implement a new system that relies on “re-education, restitution, restoration, and individual and collective healing.” ¹

PAI is a member of the Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition, a group of organizations that demand the Governor of Mississippi, elected officials, and the Department of Justice move prison inmates into a “more humane facility,” shut down the Mississippi state penitentiary, and implement educational, rehabilitative, and spiritual programs in Mississippi prisons. ⁶

Other organizations that are a part of the coalition include the Mississippi Center for Justice, a public interest law firm that focuses on racial and economic issues in the state; the Center for Constitutional Rights, a left-leaning legal advocacy group involved in issues related to race and ethnicity, immigration, limits on war-related government power, LGBT and gender issues; Color of Change, an online organizing organization created by the Obama administration’s former “green jobs czar” Van Jones and the former director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org, James Rucker, in 2005. ^{6 7 8}

Funding

The People’s Advocacy Initiative has received grants from various left-of-center nonprofit organizations:

The Just Trust is a left-of-center grantmaking organization established and funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). The group was spun off from the CZI to manage its criminal justice policy efforts. After receiving $350 million in starter funds from CZI, The Just Trust began providing grants in March 2022. The People’s Advocacy Initiative is named one of the organizations that received grant funding from The Just Trust in 2022. ³

Galaxy Gives is the New York City-based private grantmaking foundation of the Novogratz family. The foundation makes the bulk of its grants towards organizations that work in left-of-center criminal justice policy. The organization granted PAI $450,000 in 2021 under its “Criminal Justice” program area. ^{4 9}

The Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation is a left-of-center grantmaking foundation that supports left-of-center advocacy with a focus on intersectionality. The organization provided the People’s Advocacy Institute with a grant of $25,000 in 2019 and 2020, two $50,000 grants in 2021, and a $50,000 grant in 2022. ¹⁰

The Emergent Fund is a project of the Proteus Fund, which maintains the fund. It was created in partnership with  Women Donors Network and Solidaire Network after the 2016 presidential election. The Emergent Fund lists PAI as a grantee in its list of grantees for 2019, 2021, and 2022. ^{11 12 13 14}

The Tides Center is a left-of-center nonprofit created to manage the fiscal sponsorship services of its “sister” organization, the Tides Foundation. Both groups are part of the Tides Nexus of pass-through and fiscal sponsorship nonprofits based in San Francisco, California. The Tides Center provided PAI with a grant of $22,500 in 2020. ²

The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ, sometimes styled AfGJ) is an organizing group that serves as a fiscal sponsor to numerous left-wing initiatives, including Refuse Fascism, United Students Against Sweatshops, and Stop Mass Incarceration. AFGJ provided PAI with a grant of $112,000 in 2020. ^{15 16 17}

The People’s Advocacy Institute also received $23,000 from Community Connections for Youth in 2018 and was listed as a 2022 grantee of the Marigold Project. ^{18 19}

People

Rukia Lumumba is the executive director of the People’s Advocacy Institute. She is the daughter of former Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Chokwe Lumumba and sister to Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D). ⁵

Lumumba received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Tougaloo College in Mississippi, and a law degree from Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. She was the director of two large New York criminal justice organizations: the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES) and the Center for Community Alternatives. She was also co-chair of the Anti-Violence and Criminal Justice Working Group, and a committee member of the Young Women’s Initiative. ⁵