DURHAM, N.C. (December 21, 2021) — Duke Energy has awarded Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) with a $25,000 grant to expand the educational and advocacy work of the North Carolina-based organization’s Justice System Reform (JSR) team.
Through community lawyering, communications, and organizing, the JSR Team promotes social and economic justice by ensuring police accountability, ending racial profiling and mass incarceration, eliminating unfair collateral consequences from involvement with the criminal legal system, and challenging systemic racial discrimination and inequities at all ages and stages of the system.
“This Duke Energy grant will help SCSJ provide essential public education, training, and resources on the collateral consequences of the criminal legal system and allow us to better assist justice-involved North Carolinians with those impacts,” said SCSJ’s Justice System Reform Counsel, Marcus Pollard. “Through this work, our team can continue to advance policies that directly affect these and other marginalized communities with the goal of achieving lasting political change.”
SCSJ was one of 40 organizations across North Carolina to receive a $25,000 Duke Energy grant. Since 2020, the Duke Energy Foundation has committed more than $8 million to social justice and racial equity organizations, with $7.2 million dedicated to supporting nonprofits across North Carolina.
“These organizations are delivering meaningful change for underserved communities, and we’re proud to support their ongoing commitment to justice and opportunity for all,” said Stephen De May, Duke Energy’s North Carolina president.
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The Southern Coalition for Social Justice, founded in 2007, partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities in the South to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights through the combination of legal advocacy, research, organizing, and communications. Learn more at southerncoalition.org and follow our work on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.