Sowing Justice

The mission of Sowing Justice is to increase civic engagement beyond voting with organizing tools and resources to create and maintain healthy and safe communities. Headquartered in Memphis, TN, Sowing Justice works to connect communities with resources and tools that empower engagement in local, state and federal policies that affect where people live, learn, work, worship and recreate. Believing that improving civic engagement among residents in disenfranchised communities increases participation in the democratic political process, Sowing Justice seeks to reinforce the coalition of environmental justice communities by providing engagement strategies and tools for implementing policies. Using citizen science – public participation in data collection and analysis to solve real-world problems – and voter registration to increase civic engagement to address environmental racism and injustice, Sowing Justice aims to increase advocacy for policies that support clean air, water, and soil now and in the future. 

Marquita Bradshaw founded Sowing Justice after making history in the 2020 United States Senate election in Tennessee, becoming the first African American woman to win a major political party nomination in any statewide race. She comes from an activist family that worked during her childhood to raise awareness of pollution leaking from the Memphis Defense Depot, a contaminated military base in a largely African American neighborhood that became a Superfund site in 1992. Bradshaw is carrying on the family tradition. With a team of volunteers, Sowing Justice goes into communities impacted by environmental injustices to register voters and recruit and train residents as activists willing to take on climate-polluting corporations and push elected officials to make policy changes.

For more information:

Environmental groups rally against TVA’s plans to build more gas power plants – Chattanooga Times Free Press, November 2023 

Former Nominee Marquita Bradshaw Running for Senate Again – Nashville Scene, July 2023