Dream Justice
At Dream.Org we close prison doors and open doors of opportunity into the green economy. We bring people together across racial, social, and partisan lines to create a future with freedom, dignity, and opportunity for all.
The Justice program brings together leaders impacted by the criminal justice system with unlikely allies spanning the political divide to push for bold and innovative criminal justice solutions. Our network of unlikely allies has built consensus for reform among Republicans and Democrats at the state and federal level. Our Dignity for Incarcerated Women campaign has improved living conditions for more than 30,000 women incarcerated in 14 states.
We’ve spearheaded historic bipartisan federal reform legislation, including the First Step Act, that has brought more than 18,000 people home from behind bars.
Together, we create second chances and work to transform our criminal justice system.
Kenneth Nixon is one of Dream Justice’s Empathy Network Cohort Members and has made waves in Missouri throughout the past year. Through his work in the cohort, Kenneth has built upon his previous organizing skills and is learning how to create paths of engaging those in power and building support for his work throughout his community and the state of Missouri.
Kenneth has been in communication with a number of state prosecutors, district attorneys, and was even able to get Congresswoman Cori Bush to attend and speak on behalf of his organization, the National Organization of Exonerees. In August 2021, along with his organization, Kenneth hosted a rally on behalf of Kenneth Strickland and Lamar Johnson—two innocent men incarcerated in Missouri. Now, both cases have garnered national attention and Kenneth and his organization, along with Empathy Network Cohort member, ML Smith, have raised their voices to correct this injustice.
Kenneth shouldered a lot of the work on his own shoulders and has been traveling back and forth from Detroit to Missouri to continue to apply pressure on the powers that be. His work this year has been no small feat—especially considering that Kenneth himself recently returned home in February 2021 after being wrongly incarcerated for 16 years.
Financials
Programs
Empathy Network
Dream Justice has spent the last five years building a network of directly impacted advocates and leaders who serve as our eyes, ears, and boots on the ground nationwide.
The Empathy Network is currently made up of 300+ grassroots organizations and leaders in all 50 states who are committed to sharing their stories and working directly with lawmakers on policy solutions at the state and federal level.
Dignity for Incarcerated Women
Women are now the fastest-growing population behind bars. Over the last 30 years, the number of women in prison has skyrocketed by 800%. Most women behind bars are incarcerated for low-level crimes that could better be addressed by counseling and drug treatment, not incarceration.
While bipartisan reforms have rippled across the country, the needs of currently and formerly incarcerated women have been ignored.
We’re working to change all of that.
Our Dignity Campaign, led by formerly incarcerated women, has successfully changed policies in 15 states impacting a total of 30,000+ incarcerated women.
Volunteering + Events
Day of Empathy
The Day of Empathy is an annual, national day of action to generate empathy on a massive scale for the millions of Americans impacted by the criminal justice system. In partnership with our 50 state network of criminal justice reform organizers, we aim to:
Build empathy in our elected officials—governors, state legislators, and other policymakers—to take action on criminal justice reform;
Humanize and uplift the stories of those who have been impacted by the criminal justice system through personal interactions with lawmakers to demonstrate the impact that policy has on the lives of impacted people, their spouses, their children, their parents, their friends, crime survivors, and their communities.
