Si Kahn Reflects on 30 Years of Grassroots Leadership

Grassroots Leadership is a national organization founded in 1980 by Si Kahn—a folk singer/songwriter and activist with deep roots in the civil rights movement—as a multiracial state and regional community organizing effort to create a progressive movement in the U.S. South. A longtime Open Society grantee, Grassroots Leadership directs campaigns to abolish for-profit private prisons and immigrant family detention, stop prison expansion, and end the 287(g) program, which allows local law enforcement agencies to contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to act as its agents.

In May, Kahn will step down from Grassroots Leadership and retire. He and new executive director Donna Red Wing recently took part in a discussion of the organization’s legacy and future.

Listen above.