Movement Generation was birthed in the early 2000s in unceded Lisjan Ohlone territory, what is now known as the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It was conceptualized and built by a planning committee of grassroots organizers, movement builders, and popular educators organizing in community-based organizations across a vast array of issue areas. In its first two years – housed by SOUL (the School of Unity and Liberation) and the Movement Strategy Center, and under the leadership of founding director Zak Sinclair – MG convened young movement leaders from more than 30 organizations into a series of critical movement strategy discussions.

The Justice & Ecology Project developed out of this work. Amidst the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, organizers felt a deeper collective need and urgency to better understand the opportunities and challenges facing working class communities of color in relationship to ecology, sustainability, and the global ecological crisis.

In 2007, in collaboration with the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, MG developed and hosted our first set of ecological justice training retreats and evening strategy meetings for grassroots organizers. We came together looking at issues of peak oil, peak water, losses in biological and cultural diversity, climate change, environmental toxins, sustainable agriculture and food systems, as well as new opportunities for the development of local, regenerative, socially-just economies and participatory democracy.

They carry on that important work and legacy today. Since the initial meetings and retreats, we have engaged hundreds of organizations and thousands of community leaders, activists, and organizers through intensive retreats, political education, hands-on skills workshops, peer exchange, campaign development, alliance building, strategic support, and fostering MG as a political home.