Our History
Leading the fight for the rights of residents most impacted by injustice
Empower DC proudly shares the grassroots origins of so many powerful movement organizations that have shaped social change. In 2003, current Executive Director Parisa Norouzi and Linda Leaks, an award-winning Cooperative Housing organizer, co-founded Empower DC in the basement of DC’s St. Augustine Catholic Church, out of the same offices where Washington Inner-City Self Help (WISH) operated for decades prior. After the closure of WISH, Linda and Parisa started Empower DC because they understood the importance of organizations that exist to disrupt inequitable and unjust systems through community organizing. Empower DC organizes community power to ensure that residents are shaping the decisions that impact their daily lives.
Empower DC has organized with residents across the city for the past twenty years to protect and better our communities. In addition to our current campaigns, our work has addressed multiple issues of critical importance to DC’s Black and brown communities, including:
- Winning increased funding for childcare subsidies that ended the waiting list for eligible families.
- Adoption and funding DC’s most critical affordable housing laws — like the Housing Production Trust Fund and Local Rent Supplement Program.
- Fighting against the unjust and discriminatory closure of DC’s neighborhood public schools.
- Preventing the DC government from locating a polluting bus depot at the Crummell School, the heart of Ivy City.
- Creating accountability around the use of public land.
- Strengthening policies that promote racial equity.
- Documenting previously unknown community history, and more!
Watch our 20th Anniversary video recap!
