#123 Mark Winston Griffith, the Brooklyn Movement Center

I like to think that I choose my words carefully. I use terms like community organizing and movement building to describe a set of actions taken to meet social goals. But I realize that language that speaks to my own experience may ring hollow for others. Enter Mark Winston Griffith, who embraces the challenges of language and the hard, nuanced and unrelenting work of organizing and movement building in Central Brooklyn. He formed the Brooklyn Movement Center 10 years ago to reinvigorate what had become a calcified environment for change-making. And he committed to building a talented staff and engaging community members in the work needed to dismantle systemic inequities, including policing, housing, food access and environmental hazards. This is what community organizing and movement building really means. It is not easy to generate, sustain or fund but it is essential to the world we say we want to live in.