Alex Muhammad and Brandon Sturdivant

After graduating from the University of Illinois, Alex Muhammad (she/her) began her career in organizing at SOUL in Chicago in partnership with The People’s Lobby. During her time at SOUL, she led a team that registered 10,000 new black voters in southside Chicago. As lead organizer at The People’s Lobby, she led campaigns to turn out voters in state’s attorney and governor’s races.

Brandon Sturdivant (he/him) helped build the capacity of East Bay organizations through co-founding the Justice Reinvestment Coalition, which secured half of state realignment funds in support of reducing probation terms and policies that expand opportunities for employment and access for community services for formerly incarcerated people. As co-founders of Mass Liberation Project, an abolitionist organization that works to train, coach, and develop black organizers who are directly impacted by incarceration, Alex and Brandon helped to seed the creation of four new femme-led abolitionist organizations: Mass Lib Arizona, Michigan Liberation, Mass Lib Nevada, and Life After Release (DMV).

In addition, working on the principle that transforming systems requires transforming ourselves, Mass Liberation Project has instituted “Return & Reclaim,” taking black formerly incarcerated organizers to Ghana to reclaim their ancestral heritage as an act of generational resistance.