Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
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| Motto | Working for justice in the system, opportunity in our cities, and peace on our streets. |
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| Formation | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Oakland, California, USA |
| Van Jones, esq. | |
| Zachary Norris | |
| Website | ellabakercenter.org |
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a non-profit strategy and action center based in Oakland, California. The stated aim of the center is to work for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America. It is named for Ella Baker, a twentieth-century activist and civil rights leader originally from Virginia and North Carolina.
Ella Baker Center works primarily through four initiatives to break cycles of urban violence and reinvest in urban centers. The organization calls for an end to recent decades of disinvestment in cities, excessive and sometimes racist policing, and over-incarceration in order to stop violence and hopelessness in poor urban communities and communities of color. The Ella Baker Center supports better schools, cleaner environment, and more opportunities for young people and working people.
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights developed as an offshoot from Bay Area PoliceWatch, a 1995 project by the Lawyers' Commiittee for Civil Rights. PoliceWatch was founded in 1995 as a hotline for victims of police brutality, lawyer referral, and compilation of a database on officers named in complaints. The hotline was based in a closet-sized office donated by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. The need for assistance was great, so Bay Area PoliceWatch quickly outgrew the space.
Van Jones officially launched the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on September 1, 1996. Named for one of the lesser-known civil rights leaders, the Ella Baker Center said of itself, "This is not your parents’ civil rights organization.” The group was known for a passion and willingness to take on tough fights that few other organizations would tackle. It said its mission was “to document, challenge and expose human rights abuses” in the criminal justice system."
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights’ first large campaign was for Aaron Williams, an unarmed black man killed in 1995 in a street confrontation with several San Francisco police officers. Officer Mark Andaya was accused of taking part in beating and kicking Williams, emptying three cans of pepper spray into his face, and restraining him in an unventilated police van where he died. Andaya had a record for past misconduct, including involvement in the death of another unarmed black man, 37 formal complaints of racism and brutality, and five lawsuits filed against him, much of this when he worked for the Oakland Police Department and prior to his hiring by San Francisco. Bay Area PoliceWatch helped lead a community-based campaign, “Justice for Aaron Williams,” that put Andaya on public trial. After an investigation and long disagreement, the Police Commission fired Andaya from the San Francisco Police Department.
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