Building power
For Black and Brown Working Class Detroiters.
About us
Detroit Action is a union of Black and Brown, low and no-income, homeless and housing insecure Detroiter fighting for housing and economic justice. Our organization is a grassroots and member-led, multigenerational, community-based organization fighting for real political power.
Detroit Action provides opportunities for individuals and families to develop as full human beings through our leadership development workshops, organizer internships, nonpartisan voter education and mobilization drives, direct action, and collaboration with allied organizations locally, statewide, nationally, and even internationally.
Our mission
Our mission is to build the power of individuals and families to challenge the root cause of poverty, advance justice, and promote human development through neighborhood-driven community organizing and civic engagement. We believe in creating a just world where everyone has housing, healthcare, quality education, and a live-able environment.
Our model
To build an organization that serves as our members’ and staff’s political home. We believe in a Detroit Action where we can learn, build relationships and create the type of community that we deserve. Regardless of immigration status, race, or gender identity, all can find safety, support, and solidarity here. Everyone who comes through our doors with an individual story of abuse and exploitation finds that they are not alone – that in collectivizing our experiences and voices, we can build the power to change not just one case, but entire systems.
OUR ORGANIZING MODEL INTEGRATES
Deep Community Organizing
To transform the systems and power structures impacting our communities.
Key Survival Services
To tackle discrimination, abuse and poverty and their impact on the lives of Detroiters.
Policy Reform & Innovation
To make our democracy truly accountable to all of us by rewriting unjust rules and practices.
Transformative Political Innovation & Training
To develop members ability and capacity to lead our organization, our movement, and our community.
Celebrations of Culture & Life
That deepen relationships and rebuilds the bonds of community.
Radical Civic Engagement
To shape our electorate and gain the type of wins necessary to wield power.
Our values
We are an organization that believes in placing its values at the center of its organizing and campaigns. Here are the organization’s guiding values and principles:
- Centering the most impacted
- Leaderful movements
- Multiple strategies for power
- Embracing Radical Politics
- Holistic organizing
- Intersectionality and Interdependence
- Anti-capitalist/anti-racism
- Pan-Africanism and Internationalism
- Abolition
- Radical Love and Tenderness