Who we are?

Richmond For All is a progressive political home; our movement is an organizing family of choice.

OUR MEMBERS

Our members are an inspiring body of organizers, families, workers, advocates, students, and residents fighting to ensure grassroots power citywide. Collectively we organize in defense of public resources, in support of transformed democratic process, and for people-first representation in municipal elections. We strive to be unbought and unbossed.

OUR VOLUNTEER STAFF

Richmond For All’s work is supported through the invested capacity of our incredible volunteer staff members. All of our staffers commit to collective organizing through one meeting a month and 4 hours of dedicated time and work between meetings.

OUR HISTORY

We launched publicly in opposition to the proposal of a TIF district in Richmond’s city center in December, 2018. The developers were corporate giants in the fossil fuel, banking, and tobacco industries. Our coalition was made of public school teachers, public housing advocates, anti-pipeline organizers, and grassroots advocates for change. They represent the old “Virginia way;” we are determined to build a better future.

The people who stood with us in City Council that December had mobilized together before to fight public school privatization, to elect a member of our own ranks to the school board, to oppose systemic disinvestment in public housing stock, and to demand an end to environmental racism in our state. Members of that coalition had a history of collective wins: a school board election, the firing of the CEO of our housing authority, revoked permits for pipeline construction.

Over 20 organizations acted in solidarity in opposition to the transfer of public wealth to private investors. Over 100 people signed on to our statement in the first few days it was live. In a moment when our mayor was taking residents to court to deny them access to the details of the TIF district, we won: both in court and in city council. The documents were released to the public, and a citizens’ commission was established to vet the deal.

Our co-founders are the people who acted in solidarity that December to organize the actions that launched our organization (Emma Clark, Omari Al-Qadaffi, Kenya Gibson, Thomas Burkett, Jasmine Leeward, Gary Broderick, and Kristin Reed) and the people who later joined our inaugural governing teams (Whitney Whiting, Wyatt Rolla, Brionna Nomi, Anneliese Grant, Quinton Robbins, and Charlie Schmidt).

Today, Richmond For All is a member-funded and member-governed organizing community. We don’t live single-issue lives and we don’t pick single-issue fights. Through collectivized resources we have power to choose the fights that represent our lived experiences. We launched our formal membership program in September 2019, hosted our first all-member meeting in January of 2020, and our first Board elections in January of 2021.

We rise together.