Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality

The Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality is an organization of Virginia residents working for the survival of our communities through education and social justice projects. The Defenders recently celebrated 15 years of community organizing and activism! We began in June 2002. Many of us had relatives in the Richmond City Jail or state prisons and were concerned about the physical conditions of these institutions. As we worked around these issues, we learned more and more about the connections between jails, jobs, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, class, political representation, and war. We began organize and hold public forums on these issues, so we could develop more to show the connections between local and international events. We have The Virginia Defender , a statewide, quarterly newspaper; two websites ( www.DefendersFJE.blogspot.com and www.SacredGroundProject.net ); and three Facebook pages, for the Defenders organization, newspaper and radio pro...

The Virginia Defenders held a public forum on what the U.S. is doing in Zimbabwe. ​Our guest presenter was​ Netfa Freeman , former program coordinator of an agricultural project in Zimbabwe. He works for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. but was not speaking on their behalf. He also produces  Voices With Vision: Not for the Politically Faint of Heart, a radio program on WPFW 89.3 FM and podcast via iTunes and Google Play Music. The forum took place Monday, April 2, 6:30-8 pm at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, 1720 Mechanicsville Turnpike in Richmond’s East End. ​As Che once put it, we here in the U.S. live in the Belly of the Beast. That being so, we have a responsibility to know about and oppose what the 1% and its government is doing in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe. It’s not enough to only work on bettering our own lives, if we  ignore what our tax dollars and our young people in uniform are fo...