- Deadline
- Passed
Open Society-U.S.’s Soros Justice Fellowships fund outstanding individuals to undertake projects that advance reform, spur debate, and catalyze change on a range of issues facing the U.S. criminal legal system.
We are taking a moment to pause and analyze the future of our three U.S. based fellowship programs. This means we will not be issuing a call for proposals for 2025 fellows, as we would have done this fall.
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Year
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Arti Walker-Peddakotla
2022Arti Walker-Peddakotla will create tools through an abolitionist framework that work to defund the police and reinvest funds back into the community. -
Chris Watts
2022Chris Watts will create art that will spur debate around police surveillance and its harm on our society. -
Christina Hollenback
2022Christina Hollenback will build investment vehicles for capital investors to invest in community-controlled public safety and vital infrastructure and stop prison financing. -
Emile DeWeaver
2022Emile DeWeaver will write a book titled Ghost in the Prison Industrial Machine that examines the norms that undermine the movement to end racial oppression in the criminal legal system and offer counter narratives and strategies. -
Ifetayo Harvey
2022Ifetayo Harvey will build upon and create a social justice–oriented space for people of color interested in the healing potentials of psychedelics and ending the war on drugs. -
Irene Franco Rubio
2022Irene Franco Rubio and Katherine Owojori will explore the incarceration and criminalization of young people of color and our public school system through a #SchoolsNotPrisons podcast, YouTube series, and other media. -
Kate Uyeda
2022Kate Uyeda will work to ensure those detained in jails in Tennessee and elsewhere can exercise their right to vote. -
Katherine Owojori
2022Katherine Owojori and will Irene Franco Rubio explore the incarceration and criminalization of young people of color and our public school system through a #SchoolsNotPrisons podcast, YouTube series, and other media. -
Kerwin Pittman
2022Kerwin Pittman will develop a toolkit that will empower people directly impacted by incarceration to dismantle racism in North Carolina’s criminal justice system. -
Latisha Vincent
2022Latisha Vincent will highlight the names and tell the stories of families most impacted by parole denials. -
Lisa Maria Rhodes
2022Lisa Maria Rhodes will scale ALAS, a training program for teachers to support students facing immigration court or criminal district court, to a nationwide organization that trains high school educators across the country. -
Luci Harrell
2022Luci Harrell will work to dismantle policing programs that exacerbate the homelessness crisis in Atlanta. -
Nicole Nguyen
2022Nicole Nguyen will bring taboo conversations into the public space and inform abolitionist organizing. -
Pauline Rogers
2022Pauline Rogers will train, educate, and organize incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals and their families about the family reunification process in Mississippi and influence change to the child welfare system. -
Shakeer Rahman
2022Shakeer Rahman will work to dismantle policing programs that exacerbate the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. -
Tiera Howleit
2022Tiera Howleit will help elevate the voices of people of color whose lives have been impacted by the criminal justice system. -
Yasmine Arrington
2022Yasmine Arrington will produce a podcast with interviews and debates with Black and brown youth voices on issues and solutions to the criminal justice system, juvenile probation, reentry, and recidivism. -
Zachary Siegel
2022Zachary Siegel will write news stories and narrative audio stories that highlight public health and harm reduction approaches to overdose deaths. -
Ashley Torres Carrasquillo
2021Ashley Torres Carrasquillo will establish a project that seeks to counter the levels of violence and poverty experienced by mainly Black, disabled, and LGBTQ+ youth in public housing in San Juan, Puerto Rico. -
Carlos Alejandro Bracamontes Norzagaray
2021Carlos Alejandro Bracamontes Norzagaray will empower members of the refugee community to become fully-accredited Department of Justice representatives and provide free representation in immigration proceedings in the Boston area. -
Cloee Cooper
2021Cloee Cooper will develop a deeply reported podcast on how communities are impacted by far-right and paramilitary-aligned sheriffs. -
Contessa Gayles
2021Contessa Gayles and Richie Reseda will create LIFE + LIFE, a documentary and visual album that explores the ways in which this country’s notion of punishment as justice perpetuates cycles of harm. -
Emily Tucker
2021Emily Tucker will educate the public about the harm caused by replacing mass incarceration with mass surveillance, and support efforts to challenge the negative impacts of mass surveillance on peoples’ lives. -
Kilroy Watkins
2021Kilroy Watkins will create an initiative to support survivors of police torture and long-term incarceration in their efforts to productively make their way into free society. -
Lam Thuy Vo
2021Lam Thuy Vo will write articles that explore the nexus between gentrification and overpolicing, each centered around characters and communities whose stories are contextualized through data-and documents-driven research.
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Ashley Rojas
2023Ashley Rojas will educate movement leaders and cultivate power between the movement for #PoliceFreeSchools and the broader culture of abolitionist organizing efforts to end harm and punishment. -
Avalon Betts-Gaston
2023Avalon Betts-Gaston and Lloyd Gaston will research the scope and impact of Illinois Worker Rights amendment on incarcerated workers -
Betty Washington
2023Betty Washington will create OASIS (Our Aging Seniors Incarcerated Society), a project focusing on advocating for the needs of justice-impacted seniors. -
Bridgette Simpson
2023Bridgette Simpson will educate the public and create The Protected Class Network, seeking to make justice-impacted people a protected class. -
Cheryl Fairbanks
2023Cheryl Fairbanks will educate native Indigenous people and strengthen concepts of justice through an Indigenous peacemaking lens. -
Dominique Branson
2023Dominique Branson will educate, document, and destabilize anti-Black ideologies that legitimize pretrial dangerousness predictions and harm Black communities. -
Jenani Srijeyanthan
2023Jenani Srijeyanthan will establish a counter-narrative to carceral child sexual abuse prevention through the amplification and technical resourcing of a nationwide prevention movement that does not prioritize policing, criminalization, or surveillance. -
Jordan Martinez-Mazurek
2023Jordan Martinez-Mazurek will educate the public and start local and regional dialogues around fighting the expansion of mass incarceration in the South and in Appalachia. -
Lloyd Gaston
2023Together, Lloyd Gaston and Avalon Betts-Gaston will research the scope and impact of Illinois Worker Rights amendment on incarcerated workers. -
Mary Baxter
2023Mary Baxter will, through an art piece entitled “Reimagining Dignity: A Love Letter to Ourselves,” educate the public to reimagine racially charged and gender-oppressive historical events. -
Matt Nadel
2023Together, Matt Nadel and Wendi Cooper will organize a statewide screening tour of the documentary film “CANS Can’t Stand” to educate the public about the archaic 1805 Crimes Against Nature by Solicitation statute and the harsh punishments it imposed. -
Omisade Burney-Scott
2023Omisade Burney-Scott will curate a multidisciplinary initiative and educate the public on reproductive justice, radical Black feminism, gender liberation, and pathways to normalizing menopause and aging for the marginalized Black population. -
Rachel Gilmer
2023Rachel Gilmer will educate the public and build a united front of survivors and health care providers with the goal of creating non-carceral solutions that address the root causes of violence in our communities. -
Talila Lewis
2023Talila Lewis will educate and create media and art that highlights how ableism informs and drives racism, anti-Blackness, capitalism, and other forms of oppression, violence, and inequity. -
Toshio Meronek
2023Toshio Meronek will educate the public and justice advocates about the expansion of involuntary medical conservatorship in Arkansas, with a focus on its potential human and financial consequences. -
Wendi Cooper
2023Together, Wendi Cooper and Matt Nadel will organize a statewide screening tour of the documentary film “CANS Can’t Stand” to educate the public about the archaic 1805 Crimes Against Nature by Solicitation statute and the harsh punishments it imposed.