Harriet’s Wildest Dreams

Harriet’s Wildest Dreams partners with Free DC, a D.C.-based left-of-center advocacy coalition, on a program to train jurors to protect racial minorities.   ^{4  5}

Background

Harriet’s Wildest Dreams was founded in 2021 by Nee Nee Taylor, Makia Green, and Qiana Johnson following their involvement with the Black Lives Matter DC chapter and the BLM Global Network. The organization’s desires to build “alternatives to oppressive systems” through legal empowerment, political education, and mass protests. Harriet’s Wildest Dreams advocates for the abolition of prisons and police and for a “response to social problems does not include prisons, policing, prosecution, or any form of surveillance, supervision, or incarceration.” The organization asserts that prisons and police perpetuate “white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, xenophobia, ableism, and heterosexism.”  ^{6  7  8}

Activities

Programs of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams include CourtWatch DC, a program that monitors court proceedings to challenge the legal system, especially rulings that it believes disproportionately harm African Americans. The Urban Institute provided grant funding for the Courtwatch DC Program. ⁹

Harriet’s Wildest Dreams also organizes the DMV Black Mama Bailout campaign, an activist organization that advocates for the end of cash bail and pre-trial detention.  ¹⁰

In December 2024, Harriet’s Wildest Dreams partnered with Free DC, a project fiscally sponsored by Community Change and Community Change Action, to conduct the Juror Information Project, which offered trainings on serving on a jury and how jurors can use the role to protect “those with marginalized identities who are disproportionately targeted by the criminal legal system.” According to the Washington Post, Free DC encouraged attendees to be “skeptical jurors, particularly as the Trump administration has increased the federal law enforcement presence in the District.”  ^{4  5}

Partners

Harriet’s Wildest Dreams partners with numerous left-of-center groups, including Shut Down DC, the DC Safety Coalition, Stop Police Terror Project, DC Justice Lab, the ACLU of the District of Columbia, National Bail Out, Movement for Black Lives, and the DC Mutual Aid Network. As part of its community defense work, the organization participates in the DC Safety Team, a coalition of trainers and activists that mobilizes as an alternative to calling police.  ^{11  12  13}

Controversies

Harriet’s Wildest Dreams has publicly celebrated Assata Shakur (also known as JoAnne Chesimard), who escaped from prison in 1979 before fleeing to Cuba after being convicted of killing a New Jersey State Trooper. Shakur received asylum in communist Cuba and was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation‘s Most Wanted Terrorists list before her death in 2025. In 2024, Harriet’s Wildest Dreams said in a Facebook post that Shakur was a “freedom fighter and political activist” who “sought refuge in Cuba in 1984 after escaping political persecution in the U.S.,” and called her a “symbol of resistance against racism and injustice.”  ¹⁴

Leadership

As of 2026, the executive director and co-founder of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams was Nee Nee Taylor, who previously was a direct action core organizer with Black Lives Matter DC. ⁷

The co-founder and conductor of legal defense at Harriet’s wildest Dreams is Qiana Johnson. Johnson is a former prisoner who founded Life After Release and leads the organization DMV Mama Bailout.  ⁷

The co-founder and former co-conductor of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams is Makia Green. Green stepped down as co-conductor in July 2023. Green describes herself as a “queer non-binary fat Black liberation organizer” and is the former leader of DC Money Pot and organizing director with the DC Working Families Party.  ⁷