There are countless Philly-based organizations doing transformative work in the city, whether that be in labor reform, housing advocacy, racial justice, or food security. Here are a few groups to get involved with!
Active Organizations:
Reclaim Philadelphia
Reclaim Philadelphia is an organizing collective whose goal is to reclaim and build power for the multiracial working class in Philadelphia.
Reclaim Philadelphia was founded in May 2016 by former staff and volunteers with the Bernie Sanders campaign in Philadelphia. We launched our first campaign, protesting corporate power and lobbyists within the Democratic National Committee (DNC) host committee in June of 2016.
Reclaim started with a group of 35 members and one campaign and has grown into an organization with multiple issue based and electoral campaigns and task forces that are fueled by the engagement of over 870 dues paying members and hundreds of volunteers.
Reclaim Philadelphia used to be chapter member of Pennsylvania Stands Up and a member affiliate of People’s Action, but is now an independent organization.
Twitter: @reclaimphila
Website: reclaimphiladelphia.org
Email: info@reclaimphiladelphia.org
Black Philly Radical Collective
A Philadelphia volunteer-based alliance, established to protect the vested interest of our Black and Brown communities.
During this time of rebellion against police terrorism and state violence, we, the radical Black organizing community in Philadelphia, make the following immediately actionable demands upon the City of Philadelphia to abolish – by which we mean to permanently and holistically eliminate – the structures of policing and related state violence endangering our communities. These demands were written with the understanding that our more vulnerable family – our Black trans, disabled, and gender oppressed community members – are especially targeted by the systems of oppressions expressed in our demands. We center the most vulnerable within our community in this document and in our work.
We will be in the streets demanding justice for the Black community until our demands are met.
Email: info@blackphillyradicalcollective.com
Tel: (267) 225-2161
Juntos
Juntos is a community-led, Latine immigrant organization in South Philadelphia fighting for our human rights as workers, parents, youth, and immigrants. We believe that every human being has the right to a quality education and the freedom to live with dignity regardless of immigration status.
Juntos combines leadership development, community organizing, and focused collaborations with other community-based and advocacy organizations to build the power of our community members so they may be active agents of change and work against their own oppression.
IG: @vamos_juntos_
Twitter: @Vamos_Juntos_
Website: vamosjuntos.org
Email: info@vamosjuntos.org
Ginger Arts Center
The Ginger Arts Center is a free youth and arts center featuring: youth-led programming, teach-ins, workshops, professional-grade art equipment, and a workspace for art-making and studying. The center will be a space for youth to gather, socialize, learn, and foster community!
The Ginger Arts Center is led by college and high school youth from Students for the Preservation of Chinatown (SPOC) and Students Against the Sixers Arena (SASA) who formed in opposition to the proposed 76Place in Chinatown. Along with their activism and community organizing, they opened the Ginger Arts Center as a way to radically reimagine the use of space through this youth and arts center in Chinatown.
located at: 447 N 12th St.
Instagram: @gingerartscenter
Website: gingerartscenter.org
Mobilization 4 Mumia
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an internationally recognized journalist. He has spent years writing about issues concerning people of color, prisons, and marginalized peoples. To date, he has written countless articles and eight books from his prison cell on death row in Pennsylvania.
The movement for Mumia Abu-Jamal is an international network that has taken to the streets for over thirty years to stop two state sponsored executions, organized to overturn his death sentence, and recently sponsored a landmark court case which forced the PA Department of Corrections to administer treatment for his Hepatitis C. The DOC withheld his diagnosis for years and after it was discovered they refused to provide treatment for Mumia as they have for 6,000 other PA prisoners. This new victory will create a precedent to give treatment to all prisoners. With Mumia’s health still in a critical state and a new Supreme Court decision that could bring him back into court the fight for Mumia’s life is in urgent need of your support!
Website: mobilization4mumia.com
Email: Mobilization4Mumia@gmail.com
Workers Revolutionary Collective
We are organized people building community power, abolishing our shared struggles & advancing the people’s justice towards liberation.
Why does WRC exist?
- To Abolish Oppression: We educate ourselves to remain acutely aware of our true shared history & the moral bankruptcy of the international systems of oppression perpetuating class division.
- To Advance the People’s Justice: We demand & organize the transfer of power to the globally impoverished masses being intentionally exploited through corporate & government systems.
- To Create Revolutionary Change: We cultivate community solidarity & collective deployment of our nonviolent Economic, Political, Physical, Psychological, and Social power towards systematic liberation.
Website: https://www.wrc.life/
Instagram: @workers_rev_collective
Philly Socialist Alternative
Socialist Alternative is a national organization fighting in our workplaces, communities, and campuses against the exploitation and injustices people face every day, with branches in cities across the U.S. (including Philadelphia). We are community activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; we are activists campaigning for a $15 an hour minimum wage and fighting, democratic unions; we are people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, people of all genders fighting sexism and homophobia.
IG: @socialistaltphl
FB: @PhillySocialistAlternative
Twitter: @SocialistAltPHL
Website: socialistalternative.org
Email: Philly@SocialistAlternative.org
Tel: (267) 368-4564
Workers World Party
Workers World Party (WWP) is a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party dedicated to organizing and fighting for a socialist revolution in the United States and around the world. With branches around the U.S., WWP develops militant organizers in every struggle, from anti-racist and immigrant rights to labor, anti-war and anti-imperialist struggles.
Do you belong in such a party? If you want to develop a Marxist-Leninist, revolutionary perspective; if you want to be active in the mass struggle to build solidarity with the workers and the oppressed; if you want to use your skills and resources to work collectively with like-minded activists to build toward a socialist future — then the answer is yes!
WWP-Philly:
- IG: @wwp_philly
- FB: @WWPhilly
- Email: wwphila@gmail.com, Phila@workers.org
- Tel: (610) 931-2615
WWP-National:
- Twitter: @workersworld
- Website: workersworld-party.org
- News site: workers.org
Black Lives Matter Philly
Black Lives Matter (BLM) Philly is the Philadelphia chapter of the BLM movement. BLM Philly is a Black organization that seeks to disrupt the countless acts of violence committed against Black people. Locally, they are striving to build Black power, Black joy, Black healing, and a Black liberation movement through grassroots organizing, political education, youth development, and coalition building.
IG: @blmphilly
Twitter: @BLMPhilly
Listserv: blmphilly.crd@gmail.com
Website: blmphilly.com
Email: blacklivesmatterphilly@gmail.com
West Philly Food Not Bombs
Foods Not Bombs (FNB) is a movement that shares and recovers free vegan and vegetarian food, that would otherwise be discarded, for the public in over 1000 cities around the world. Their work is founded in protest against war, poverty, and the destruction of the environment.
Each group is independent and invites everyone to participate in making decisions for their local chapter using the consensus process. FNB is dedicated to taking nonviolent direct action to change society so no one is forced to stand in line to eat at a soup kitchen expressing a commitment to the fact that food is a right and not a privilege. With over a billion people going hungry each day how can we spend another dollar on war? West Philly FNB shares food every Friday at 4:30 PM at the Malcolm X Park, 5100 Pine St. Have some extra time in the afternoon? Work at a coffee shop, restaurant, grocery, etc and want to donate food? Want to toss us some coin for supplies? If you would like to get involved (even one Friday a month is a big help!) get in contact with us on our social media.
FNB (West Philly):
- IG: @foodnotbombswestphilly
- Cash App: $WPFNB
- Paypal: @ahimsahousephilly
Website (National): foodnotbombs.net
Sunrise Movement Philadelphia
We are the Philadelphia hub of Sunrise Movement, a group of young people dedicated to stopping climate change and winning a Green New Deal that ensures every Philadelphian has access good jobs, stable housing, clean air and water, and green community spaces. Our current campaign, ‘Green Spaces, Active Places,’ is calling on Mayor Parker and City Council to invest in our rec centers, libraries, and community spaces to make our neighborhoods safe, now and for generations to come. That means:
(1) Fully fund and staff rec-centers and libraries to keep them open seven days a week
(2) Repair every rec-center and library so they are safe, accessible, and run on 100% renewable energy by 2030
(3) Create public community gardens that grow fresh food
(4) Create family sustaining union jobs and training programs to accomplish all of the above. This is the kind of leadership we need from city government to stop gun violence and climate change.
Website: https://hubs.sunrisemovement.org/philadelphia
Instagram: @sunrisemvmtphilly
Philly Palestine Coalition
We are a Philly-based Alliance of Palestinian, Black & Indigenous communities working to uplift Palestinian liberation.
Our Demands
- We demand that the blockade on Gaza be lifted immediately.
- We demand an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of all Occupied Palestinian land and the right of return for all Palestinians globally.
- We demand the United States halt its complicity in enabling and financially funding the continuous massacres of Palestinians and revoke the billions of dollars in funding it promises year after year.
- We demand that local and international news agencies commit to unbiased and honest reporting that is free of Islamophobic and racist tropes.
Until then, we offer our unequivocal support to the Palestinian people and their right to resist occupation and oppression, by any means necessary.
Instagram: @phillypalestinecoalition
Philly Students for Justice in Palestine
We are a cross-campus coalition of students from academic institutions throughout the greater Philadelphia area, in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance against the Zionist entity. We aim to organize cross-campus actions, support the students in their fight against genocidal academic institutions, and unite and escalate the student intifada.
Instagram: @phlsjp
Email: PhillySLPAlliance@proton.me
Philly Thrive
Philly Thrive is a multi-racial, cross-class, intergenerational organization rooted in the communities most impacted by the legacy of the South Philly oil refinery. We are a basebuilding, membership organization that believes in the power of nonviolent direct action to achieve environmental justice. For us, the environment is where we live, work, and play; it is the air we breathe and the place we call home. Therefore, every issue from gun violence to women’s rights can be traced back to how our environment is being managed.
Instagram: @phillythrive
Website: phillythrive.org
Philly Tenants Union
The Philadelphia Tenants Union was founded in 2016 and is a tenant-led organization dedicated to building organized tenant power and raising tenant political consciousness as a part of the struggle of the entire working class for freedom and dignity. Philadelphia is currently experiencing a housing crisis, where a fifth of the city’s affordable housing has been lost between 2000-2014, eviction rates are as high as 15% in certain sections of the city, and landlords hold more power than ever in the courts and in the lobbying room. The PTU is committed to fighting against this through grassroots direct action and campaigning for laws such as Just Cause that would protect vulnerable tenants from unfair evictions. We believe that unless tenants across the city unite and organize, landlords will only keep getting stronger, housing prices will continue to rise, and people will continue to be displaced from their neighborhoods.
Instagram: @phltenantsunion
Website: phillytenantsunion.org
Writers Against the War On Gaza
Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) is a coalition of media, cultural, and academic workers who are committed to the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people. We organize against Zionism and American militarism from within the imperial core. We are comprised of Philadelphia poets, storytellers, journalists, researchers, scholars, editors & cultural workers organizing for liberation from the river to the sea.
Instagram: @phillywawog
Website (national): writersagainstthewarongaza.com
Directories:
- Philly We Rise: Includes a list of Philly-based community organizations as well as a local mutual aid and resource directory
- A Radical Guide: Includes a list of anarchist and revolutionary spaces in Philadelphia
- Red Philly: Includes a list of anarchist and socialist spaces in Philadelphia as well as information on Philadelphia economics and politics
- Philly Anti-Capitalist: Includes a list of anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist organizations in Philly as well as Philly-centered anti-authoritarian news and ideas
Food Production and Distribution:
- The People’s Kitchen Philly: “A collaborative of chefs, students, and community members responding to Philadelphia’s chronic issues while growing and cooking free, delicious meals.”
- Sankofa Community Farm: A “3.5-acre community-based crop farm, rooted in the experience of the African Diaspora.”
Political Education:
- The Philadelphia Liberation Center: A “community hub for solidarity, struggle, and socialist political education staffed by volunteers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation.”
- The Saturday Free School: A “school for the people” that meets every Saturday “to discuss social movements, politics, and the path ahead for humanity.”
- The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction: A “political education program for aspiring revolutionaries and movement leaders from those communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration.”
- Making Worlds Cooperative Bookstore: “a nonprofit cooperative movement-based bookstore and social center located in West Philadelphia with roots in independent book publishing, education, community media and journalism, and organizing”.
Supplies:
- Abortion Liberation Fund of PA: Provides counseling and financial assistance to people who need access to abortion
Note: The profiles included for each organization in the list, as well as the quotes used in the document, were directly pulled from the respective organizations’ websites.
Penn Disorientation Guide 