Action can take so many forms, but it's difficult to even know where to begin.

Here's a list of organizations doing incredible work towards meaningful change in social and racial justice. There are many more, so please do your own digging or get in touch about other ways to get involved.

So, where to start? Money and time. Find a group with a purpose that resonates with you, and donate money, or find ways to give your time and talents for things like community organizing and advocacy.

OREGON (in alphabetical order)

Basic Rights Oregon
Working to ensure that all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Oregonians experience equality by building a broad and inclusive politically powerful movement, shifting public opinion, and achieving policy victories.

Black Lives Matter PDX
A collective of Black people organizing against capitalism and colonialism.

CAUSA
Statewide Latino immigrant rights organization. Working to defend and advance immigrant rights by coordinating with local, state, and national coalitions and allies. The largest Latino civil and human rights organization in the Pacific Northwest.

Critical Resistance
Seeks to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.

Don’t Shoot PDX
Helping shape tools for accessing voices in community outreach with political power and influence, including non-violent direct action and protest.

Generational Resistance PDX
An alliance of POC activists in the Portland metro area, their goal is to uplift marginalized voices and decenter whiteness in the activist community.

OPAL PDX
Builds power for environmental justice and civil rights in our communities, organizes low-income communities and people of color to achieve a safe and healthy environment where they live, work, play and pray.

Oregon Justice Resource Center (OJRC)
Promoting civil rights and improved legal representation for communities that have often been underserved in the past: people living in poverty and people of color among them.

NATIONWIDE 

Community Justice Exchange—National Bail Fund Network
A group dedicated to developing, sharing and experimenting with tactical interventions, strategic organizing practices, and innovative organizing tools to end all forms of criminalization, incarceration, surveillance, supervision, and detention. 

NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Uses advocacy and litigation to achieve racial justice, focusing specifically on issues of education, voter protection, economic justice, and criminal justice.

Equal Justice Initiative
Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, the widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.

Southern Poverty Law Center
Combats hate, intolerance, and discrimination through education and litigation.

Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights Under Law
Marshals the pro bono resources of the bar for litigation, public policy advocacy, and other forms of service by lawyers to the cause of racial justice and economic opportunity.

Innocence Project
Works to achieve the exoneration and release of factually innocent inmates through post-conviction DNA testing and works to create a network of schools, organizations, and citizens that can effectively challenge wrongful convictions.

Sentencing Project
An independent source of criminal justice policy analysis, data, and program information for the public and policy makers.

Prison Policy Initiative (PPI)
Documents the impact of mass incarceration on individuals, communities, and the national welfare, and produces accessible and innovative research to empower the public to participate in creating better criminal justice policy.

The Marshall Project
A nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization seeking to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We achieve this through award-winning journalism, partnerships with other news outlets and public forums.

Justice Policy Initiative (JPI)
Works to enhance the public dialog on incarceration through accessible research, public education, and communications advocacy with the goal of ending society’s reliance on incarceration.

Grassroots Leadership
Seeks to put an end to abuses of justice and the public trust by working to abolish for-profit private prisons.

Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty (NCADP)
Provides information, advocates for public policy, and mobilizes and supports individuals and institutions that share an unconditional rejection of capital punishment.

Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC)
Organizes communities impacted by the criminal justice system and advocates to release incarcerated people, to restore human and civil rights and to reunify families and communities

Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC)
A union for the incarcerated fighting for prison abolition, a prisoner-led section of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Sources: startguide.org and Portland State University.