Cleveland Freedom Dreams Coalition

We focus on radical joy through healing-centered, culturally rooted leadership development infrastructure for Black + Brown leaders and Black + Brown serving organizations.

We achieve this through shared and individual use of the Anti-Racist Community Development framework. This framework pushes us to imagine and work toward a future that is holistic, equitable, race-conscious, bottom-up, inside-out, adaptive, contextualized in place and culture, and it prioritizes the needs of those who have been made the most vulnerable and marginalized..

Since inception in 2023 (and through our own commissioned research) we’ve learned the capacity, preservation, connectedness and long-term sustainability of the Black + Brown civic infrastructure ecosystem in Cleveland directly correlates to access to the following:

Healing as Infrastructure Centering somatic, cultural, and restorative practices so that transformation work is sourced from collective health, not survival and scarcity.

Radical Imagination + Future-Forward Design Creating space for freedom dreaming, strategic foresight, scenario planning, long-range ecosystem strategy, and visionary civic architecture — moving from reactive to problem-solving.

Organizational Power + Decolonized Practice Building durable, justice-rooted institutions through shared services and decolonized practices so partners can sustain and scale on their own terms.

Talent Development + Movement Pipeline Developing, placing, and retaining emerging and seasoned Black and Brown leaders through strategic alignment with senior leadership to strengthen the collected Black + Brown civic ecosystem.

Who We Are

The Cleveland Freedom Dreams Coalition is a community of Black + Brown leaders of organizations rooted in and accountable to these communities. It is a deconstructed coalition model built around shared space, trusted relationships, and collective vision.

We are a trusted container; a space for professional healing, collective reflection, learning + problem-solving, strategic facilitation, and learning incubators designed to future-proof our work and strengthen the civic connectedness of like-led organizations.

Without new visions, we don’t know what to build, only what to knock down. We not only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical, but we forget that making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics, but a process that can and must transform us.

Robin D.G. Kelley
Freedom Dreams, The Black Radical Imagination

We Are Accountable To

Black + Brown-serving and Black + Brown-led organizations and their leaders, whose capacity, preservation, connectedness, and long-term sustainability are priority.

The coalition seeks to strengthen this ecosystem by building healing-centered, culturally rooted leadership development infrastructure, accountable to these leaders and the communities they serve.

Our Practice

We practice solidarity and cultivate community among values-aligned leaders committed to radical joy, building power, practicing collective interpersonal relationship-building, and transforming systems together.

Equitable Civic Engagement + Democracy Building: Inclusive and participatory process empowering marginalized voices in decision-making and promoting democratic principles.

Power + Ownership: Providing access to shelter and collective and individually owned living spaces. Collaborative efforts to enhance economic wellbeing, ownership and co-owning for and with community.

Civic Infrastructure: Physical and organizational systems supporting community functioning and development.

Anti-Racist Community Development

Anti-racist community development is holistic, equitable, race-conscious, bottom-up, inside-out, adaptive, contextualized in place and culture, and it prioritizes the needs of those who have been made the most vulnerable and marginalized.

Liberated Spaces:

Co-create liberated third spaces for people of color rather than reproduce extractive institutional structures.

Resident/Community Accountability:

Centering resident voice and practitioner accountability over top-down development models. This is deeper than listening sessions, door-knocking and surveys. This is iterative and requires community inclusion during all stages of development and project timeline.

Place-based Community-led:

Getting our people access and reps (contract + bid opportunities—connections and relationship building). We center BIPOC community members and leaders as the practitioners driving the work.

Disrupting Disinvestment + Displacement:

The “Power building” pillar explicitly names this and connects CFDC work to the ARCD diagnostic of what harms our communities.

Narrative Strategy-Structural Change:

Challenge to move from dominant narrative disruption to policy and practice change. we tell our own stories. We are the architects of history and the future; we must preserve the history and tell the stories.

Healing is Liberation, and this is our liberatory work

This is a decision making matrix developed and used by the Cleveland Freedom Dreams Coalition

It means knowing that coalition, like unity, means the coming together of whole, self-actualized human beings, focused and believing, not fragmented automatons marching to a prescribed step. It means fighting despair.

Audre Lorde
Author, Poet + Civil Rights Activist

WHO WE ARE

Local partners from + serving Black, Latinx, Indigenous + AAPI communities

Coalition Members

Key Supporters

Our Vision, Story & Impact

Explore the substantial progress our Coalition has achieved in and learn how we work towards a shared vision for allocating federal and philanthropic funds by fostering a collaborative, consensus-driven framework across our diverse coalition of partners. Through ongoing discussions, participatory decision-making, and an equity-centered approach, the Coalition has begun to create a structured process to ensure funds are distributed in ways that advance racial and economic justice.

GET IN TOUCH

For more information, please contact:

Dr. Chavone Nash – Project Director, ThirdSpace Action Lab
chavone@3rdspaceactionlab.co