Movement Matters Team

Movement Matters has offered significant support and guidance to Justice for Muslims Collective (JMC) as we continue to develop our power building model. The MM team has trained JMC members and staff on the nuts and bolts of organizing, base-building, relationship building, and engaging in one-on-ones.

Given MM's decades of experience with community organizations, they have been a tremendous resource and support on organizational development and continue to provide advice as JMC figures out what a sustainable organization focused on power-building can look like in the DC-metro and broader DC-Maryland-Virginia community. Movement Matters plays a vital role in upholding organizations like ours.
Darakshan Raja,
​Co-Director, Justice for Muslims Collective.

About Marta

Marta Vizueta Bohórquez (she-they) is a popular educator, cultural organizer, community artist, dance instructor, and somatic practitioner in Washington, DC, as well as a principal and founder of Movement Matters. She brings extensive experience in working in multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual contexts with grassroots communities of color, and in supporting the development of organizations with deep core values and strong administrative capacities.

Originally from an Ecuadorian family grounded in liberation theology, Marta arrived in New York City with her grandmother and brother when she was nine years old. She grew up in the streets of Jackson Heights and North Brooklyn with Puerto Rican, Black, and immigrant communities where she learned English and actively volunteered at community centers supporting families, workers, and youth. She began traveling by bus throughout the country at 18, clear in the need to understand the United States, its cultures, its histories, its layered complexities, and its unheard voices.

Marta has organized in Black and first and second generation immigrant communities in DC/Chocolate City since 1997. Understanding how white supremacy, racism, classism, xenophobia, anti-Blackness, queerphobia and other forms of oppression occupy a central role in society and the non-profit world, Marta has challenged and moved organizations and their staff to deepen their values, build community leadership, and fully ground their work in the voices they represent. For example, as the Popular Education Director for Manna Community Development Corporation (Manna CDC), she furthered the values and capacity of the staff and member leaders to envision and transform the organization into Organizing Neighborhood Equity DC (ONE DC), a popular education-based, member led organizing group in the nation's capital.
+ Read More +

Marta believes in movement building and in the necessity to develop sustaining networks and supports for visionary organizers and community leaders. Inspired by her studies at the Highlander Research and Education Center and by witnessing the relentless challenges faced particularly by Black, Indigenous, Native, Brown, POC and TLGBQ+ organizers, Marta creates transformational cultural spaces for unpacking, cross-pollination, relationship building, and restoration. Her earlier work in this area includes the development of the DC Kressley Initiative (2006), which trained and supported local community organizers, and the annual Shaw Freedom School (2006), a yearly multi-lingual event that brought community members (Black, and Central American and Chinese immigrants) together for a day of capacity building, story sharing, joy, and culture. This approach can be currently seen and felt in Marta’s work with Movement Matters’ Community Organizing & Popular Education Institute, Advanced Training Series, Learning & Action Circles, and Community Healing & Action Circles.

In the DC public education arena, Marta’s successful multiracial, multi-lingual parent organizing work earned national recognition and continued Ford Foundation funding in the early 2000s. Under the auspices of Teaching for Change and the DC Public Schools Department of Multicultural Education/Office of Civil Rights Compliance, she also developed a fully funded program to train DC teachers and lead teachers/mentors on anti-racism and multicultural education.

Marta has been key in developing popularized/culturally competent organizing manuals, curriculum guides, and advocacy tool kits, including Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching—a project she originally imagined and developed with the accompaniment of cultural educator, James Counts Early, as well as former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members and other modern Civil Rights Movement leaders and supporters, including historian Howard Zinn. Her other publications include Building By Building: A Tenant Leadership Manual—a popularized curriculum for DC tenants, tenant leaders, and organizers, and Fighting Back on Budget Cuts, A Tool Kit—which Marta co-developed with Makani Themba, while also leading The Praxis Project’s training department.

Marta braids and holds generative, transformational spaces—​grounded in values, culture, ritual, and somatics—​that expand vision, grow knowledge, and de-colonize voice and bodies. She is happiest when she is facilitating with neighborhood children, youth, and adults; learning, growing, and laughing together. An ethno-contemporary dancer and long-time sought after teacher, Marta uses movement, expressive arts and story to sustain radical healing and joy so that we can continue to reclaim and strengthen our bodies, our voices, and deepen our innate connection to nature.

Marta is also a doula, a curandera-healer (continuing her 16 years of study with vegetalista lines of the Amazon), and works deeply with plants and trees. She is fluent in Spanish and English and proficient in Brazilian Portuguese. For more on Marta's somatics and dance work, visit martadances.com
+ Read Less +

About David

David Haiman (he-him) is a principal and co-founder of Movement Matters. His 25+ years of experience in movement work has led to a deep understanding of racial and economic justice, transformative facilitation techniques, and the mechanics of popular education and movement-based community organizing. These skills and perspectives have helped to develop Movement Matters into an effective and dynamic capacity building organization.   

David has worked with grassroots organizations like Detroit Action, ROC-DC, and Young People for Progress to develop their member engagement structures, support strategic campaign development, and build movement oriented organizing cultures. This work combines deep relationship building and accompaniment of individual staff members along with an understanding of how to build needed organizational infrastructure and capacity. As part of this organizational infrastructure building, David has also initiated and led programs to recruit and train board members for grassroots organizing groups.

His extensive work at the organizational level has led to David’s strength in working with coalitions. He has anchored training, planning, and strategy development processes for local, state-wide, and national coalition groups, ranging from the DC Cancel Rent Coalition to Virginia's Climate and Equity Working Group to the national Communities for Public Education Reform network. In these roles, David has brought visionary thinking grounded in practical application to allow coalitions to connect immediate, implementable steps with a long-term vision of  radical transformation.
+ Read More +

​In addition to working with grassroots organizations, David has also led work to strengthen the way foundations and philanthropy support work grounded in racial equity and systems change. Through one-on-one consulting, training, and  the development of reports, he has worked with small family funds and larger endowed foundations to shape both what they fund and how they fund it. As part of this work, and alongside other members of the Movement Matters team, David co-created a “Community Organizing for Funders” training designed to give philanthropic staff the knowledge and understanding they need to better support and grow organizing work.

David has also co-led the establishment of Movement Matters’ nationally recognized training program. He has co-developed the curriculum and led the training of hundreds of participants in Movement Matters' weeklong Community Organizing and Popular Education Institute and Advanced Trainings in Facilitation Skills for Organizers, Strategic Communications and Media Development, and Advanced Popular Education. In addition, David has adapted Movement Matters’ training curriculum into a weeklong Immigrant Youth Organizing Institute.

David also serves as a trainer and facilitator for national groups like NeighborWorks America. He trains on a variety of topics related to community organizing and social justice, including: Community Organizing, Leadership Development, Organizational Development for Community Ownership, and Equitable Community Development. In addition to these training roles, David was an adjunct faculty member at the Catholic University School of Social Work for 15 years, where he taught community organizing.

Prior to Movement Matters, David spent 10 years at Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE DC, formerly Manna CDC), starting as a staff organizer and ending as the Associate Director and Director of Community Organizing. In this capacity, he worked with community residents and the ONE DC Organizing Team to initiate, fund, and grow new organizing projects to increase residents’ control over the development of their community to address systemic issues of racial and economic injustice. Under his leadership, the organization involved hundreds of residents in efforts that created the District’s first resident-led comprehensive community benefits agreement; secured commitments for 92 units of new, very affordable rental apartments; and developed and funded, through City legislation, a $2 million training and hiring program for living wage jobs created in new development. As a Management Team member, David led and oversaw the transition of Manna CDC to the fully independent organization, ONE DC, managing fundraising, strategic planning, community-based board development, and staff development.

Prior to his work at ONE DC, David received his Master’s Degrees in Social Work and Public Policy from the University of Michigan.

David is fluent in spoken and written English and proficient in spoken and written Spanish.
​+ Read Less +

Our Team

Movement Matters is made up of visionary, courageous movement builders that create with us in order to make change happen in our communities, regions, and throughout the nation. We are thankful to sustain this work together.

About Nawal

Nawal Rajeh (she-her) is a community organizer, popular educator, peace educator and facilitator in the DC and Baltimore area. She is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants and has been motivated by her experiences to work and organize for peace and justice.

Nawal began her career as a community organizer 15 years ago.  In 2013, she co-founded By Peaceful Means, a non-profit that trains social justice groups in conflict transformation and anti-oppression, and offers programs for youth in peace education. By Peaceful Means trains and employs local Baltimore high-school aged students to help run two summer programs that serve over 120 youth annually in East Baltimore. 

She has over 10 years of experience working with youth and community members using popular education methods, participatory action research and theater. She is a trained Theatre of the Oppressed facilitator and is passionate about using art to envision a more just and equitable world.

Nawal is a lecturer for the Justice and Peace Studies program at Georgetown University, teaching community organizing to undergraduates. She is currently a PhD candidate at George Mason University's Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

About Asha

Asha Carter (she-her) is a facilitator, organizer, and environmental justice advocate. Her love of food and commitment to liberation were cultivated by her grandmother, a daughter of sharecroppers who was able to preserve and pass on her love of the land.

Asha began her career supporting youth led organizing for environmental justice in Boston and developing local policy in Atlanta, Georgia. She went on to serve in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration and worked to defend the agency against Congressional attacks. Later, during her time as the Food Justice Strategist at DC Greens, she organized with community leaders most impacted by food insecurity to build power to impact policy at the city level. Asha is the former Deputy Director of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, and continues to support Black queer and trans land stewards to build community, resources, and power together with the Black Mycelium Project. She is also a regional Co-Chair of the Chesapeake Foodshed Network and sits on its Community Ownership, Empowerment & Prosperity (COEP) Action Team.

Asha has expertise in organizational development, relational organizing, and uncovering where liberatory systems analysis meets praxis. She is an alumna of Wellesley College, where she earned her B.A. in Peace and Justice Studies with a concentration in Urban Development and Sustainability.

About Amrita

Amrita Wassan (they-them) situates themself in the interstices between individual and collective liberation. This focus has led to projects as diverse as cultural campaigns promoting healthy relationships in LGBTQIA communities, collectivization of resources for hyper local grant making, building multiple cooperative businesses, working to support youth both inside and outside schools with their creative and political desires, and creating spaces and economic opportunities for survivors of sexual and domestic violence.

As an educator and economic alternatives builder, they are constantly honing their craft with an ever expanding repertoire of tools as well as networks of learning communities.

About David

David V. Hunt (he-him) ​is a nationally recognized teacher and leader in organizing for social change. He has been trained in many small and large group facilitation methods which serve him well as a nationally sought after speaker, facilitator, trainer, planner, thinker, and community organization builder.

Using a variety of community organizing techniques, David has taught the fundamentals of organizing to thousands of people. Teaching and practicing what he learnt as one of four principal trainers of the Midwest Academy from 1998-2012, David has been instrumental in winning many victories for individuals and the communities they serve.

David is the founder of the Community Building Story Project, a project designed to reintroduce storytelling into American culture as a tool to build community and heal the nation. He uses storytelling to create sacred space where the voices and visions of all that are gathered can be shared and heard. His presentations give insight to his belief that next to the universal laws of physics, absolutely nothing impacts the universal and collective human spirit and its mystical and magical journey, more than story.

He founded David Hunt & Associates in 1996 to serve as an institution dedicated to citizen empower and community development. Much of David's research, training and methodology were born during his three-year W.K. Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Fellowship.

About Alicia

Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom (she-her) is a nationally recognized expert in youth development and youth organizing, and building systems that reflect the human-centered needs of children, youth and families. She is also a parent of three children, living in a seven-person, multi-generational household where all manner of self-directed creative, community-focused and scientific inquiry projects are encouraged.

Over the last 20 years, she has worked with youth, families and the organizations that support them in advocating and organizing around their own community and social supports; in strengthening community partnerships and improving the work of foundations and intermediaries to promote community-driven work around ensuring that the social and community ecosystem supports all youth.

For two decades, Alicia has worked with both national and community-based groups on a range of youth-focused projects including facilitation of community-planning and outreach for the Detroit Forward Promise/My Brother's Keeper initiative, the Clayton County (GA) Juvenile justice systems reform collaborative; budget training for youth organizers through The Children's Funding Project; technical assistance to support the Wayne County (Detroit) Wayne Kids Win! tax fund campaign to generate a $55 million fund to support afterschool programs and strategy guidance for creating a dedicated fund for youth in Minneapolis in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

Alicia has co-authored several articles, guides and reports and curated web-based content related to this body of work including the report, Funding Brighter Futures: How Local Governments Enhance Investments in Kids, and a curated website, Democratizing Evidence, on centering the creation and use of evidence in communities.

About Juan Carlos

Juan Carlos Vega (he-they-she) is a Latinx and LGBTQ+ advocate, librarian and community organizer looking to create change at the local level. His involvement with social and health justice issues began in 2001 when he transitioned into the non-profit world after over 10 years of working for Michigan State University Libraries and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. His work has always focused on Latinx, Puerto Rican/Chicanx, LGBTQ+, Black, Immigrant and other marginalized communities to address how the lack of information, data, resources, and supermarkets directly affect the health and social and economic parity for our communities.

His professional experiences include Director of the Puerto Rico Art Museum ​Research Center, and later, the Sila Calderon Foundation library where he integrated the libraries into programs and community centers. While at The Praxis Project he established the Information Resource Center, provided technical assistance to the RWJ-funded Policy Advocacy on Tobacco & Health (PATH) program grantees, and provided support in the development/dissemination of print and electronic content, including training curricula, case studies, and an online local policies database. While at the National Influenza Vaccination Disparities Partnership Network he engaged Latinx, Black, and immigrant community groups in influenza control and prevention.
​+ Read More +

​Juan Carlos was an Advisory Committee Member for the CDC-funded National Latino Tobacco Control Network and Steering Committee Member for LGBT Healthlink: the Network for Health Equity where he engaged in the reduction of health disparities across the country. At Centerlink, he engaged LGBTQ+ grassroots initiatives and organizations in states like Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Oregon, Washington, DC, and Wyoming. Juan Carlos founded the Citizen's Alliance Pro LGBTTA Health to help reduce health disparities among LGBTQ+ communities in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, develop data collection standards, host educational events, and establish partnerships with universities, grassroots and youth-led groups, and national/regional organizations. As a sought-after 2020 US Census enumerator, he engaged and surveyed Dominican, Puerto Rican, Haitian, Jamaican, Black, and Salvadoran households in Philadelphia and DC.
​
​Juan Carlos was a co-host at the Reality Disfunction Podcast and a board member Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists (SALIS) International Association. He received a BS in Marketing and a Minor in Latin American & Caribbean Studies from Michigan State University, and a Masters in Library and Information Studies from the University of Maryland.
​+ Read Less +
Delia Beristain Noriega
Program and Administration

Brenda Perez Amador
Facilitation and Youth Organizing
Miguel Castro Luna
Facilitation and Worker Organizing

Peter J. Figgis
Art Build and Space Creation

We want to hear from you.

​Send us any questions, comments, recommendations, as well as requests for resources, trainings, or technical assistance you may have. We ARE listening, and to the best of our abilities we hope to be in solidarity with individuals, groups, and organizations seeking support.

MM Biannual Bulletin

We also welcome you to join our new MM Bulletin list!
​We will add your email to our private database, and you will receive our biannual newsletter full of resources and announcements that may be of importance to your work. ​