As a Community DJ, Cuqui Rivera isn't comfortable in front of a room, but she's been forced to become accustomed to being at the frontlines. Rivera, the founder of the Latina Action Network and New Jersey Prison Justice Watch, is a community organizer and Civil Rights advocate. As she's evolved over the years, she said she's come to understand that rallies and activism have purposes. For her, a huge part of it is unity.

Some are called to sing, others to preach, but Kevin Pierre’s calling is standing up for the people he calls “the least among us.” Pierre, 47, is Tri-Chair of the New Jersey Poor People’s Campaign, or NJPPC, an organization he joined in the fall of 2018 because he saw too many people who did not reach full potential because of their economic situations.

Steve Bernhaut grew up in a conservative Jewish home that nurtured a worldview centered on the holocaust. As a young man navigating his way to a more just world, Bernhaut was inspired by the work of Ploughshares in the anti-nuclear movement and Jonah House on their grounding in non-violence.

When Tyrone Lockett heard the story of Eleanor Bumpurs, he laced his shoes and took to the streets in protest.

Bumpurs, a 66-year old public housing tenant in The Bronx, faced eviction from her apartment for withholding rent. She refused to pay and maintained that the New York City Housing Authority failed to complete her repair requests. But on Oct. 29, 1984, after she screamed from inside her apartment at city marshalls trying to serve her an eviction notice, NYCHA responded by calling on the police to remove Bumpers from her home.

EAST ORANGE, NJ—Ingrid Hill grew up at a time of severe systemic injustice. It was the 1960s, and the world was turning upside down.

As a teenager, she was part of a "collective," surrounded by community elders, family members, and friends who were all committed to each other and making a better world for all.