About
Make Justice Normal is a growing collective, fiscally sponsored by Moore Impact, imagining, studying, sharing, and practicing systems in which justice is normal. We started MJN to create space for people to openly question norms and design into new normals.
To support collective action, MJN aims to share time and/or resources to develop or host projects by collective members. These projects may seem unrelated and become independent entities.
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Create mental space to radically question norms, consider wild futures, and remember ancestral wisdoms. Name and bring honesty to implied or unspoken dynamics, to bring them out into the light, analyze them, and generate solutions.
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Feature and share what embodied systems look like, to listen & learn in community.
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Describe and organize characteristics of contracts, norms, pledges, & methods of embodied systems.
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Pilot, practice, and live in embodied systems ourselves, as doers not theoreticians.
Values
Our values are our mission. With each of them, we ask: what does it take to design a system in which these values are the norm of our every action and decision? We’re building as we learn. As a nonprofit operating in a circular structure — one of our four characteristics of justice — we expect each project may need values unique to its purpose.
Justice
Justice isn't a program; it's a practice of daily thinking & habits in our homes, work, teams, and business models. We try to build around what is just without silos that prevent norm shifts.
Loving Care
Before we were workers, we were children, family, neighbors, and friends. We’re people-first and practice space for healing and full selves, recognizing that systems often make it hard.
Solidarity
We believe in shared abundance & ownership that enables us to foster collective benefit, not just individual. We hope to turn solidarity into a daily ritual.
Process
Values are not a set of general ideals. They codify behaviors that shape a system — how we coordinate, cooperate, and live side by side, including how we govern and distribute money. To design systems, we follow these three steps.
Clarify Values
What is justice, loving care, and solidarity? What does this future world look like in which they are norms? And do we have a common understanding of the language?
Describe Characteristics
What are functional characteristics of a system where our values are norm? Why do status quo systems incentivize injustice or disincentivize justice?
Write Philosophies
When you know it isn't working and what you want, you can propose alternative governance guidelines. We call these philosophies, because they express beliefs.
Model
MJN will never organize in traditional hierarchy. To embody circular leadership, we advance values in a centralized system studio. Each collective member can lead, support, advise, and invent based on their capacity and interests in a decentralized venture studio.
System Studio
In the system studio, we evolve what it means to make justice normal, by defining values and philosophies that are commonly pooled and practiced. In these centralized practices, we cross-pollinate among diverse activities run by different people in the venture studio.
Venture Studio
In the venture studio, community members test new business models and ideas for large-scale change alongside testing governance or value models from the system studio. Ventures can spin out. But we strive to foster collective support that makes us better together.
Studios
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Into the Record (Venture)
What if just were normal? Across the globe, people are asking this question and practicing change in their organizations, communities, and homes. To write their stories into the record, MJN co-founder, Monique Aiken, takes us on their journeys to build alternative futures.
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Street Works (Venture)
Street Works, a project of The Arisen, are public-space “galleries” for participatory art. Sister to the protest and block party, Street Works center co-creation, as a form of shared power, on our shared streets. Our pilot Street Work is dedicated to Earth and climate action.
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Re-Works (Venture)
Our cultural asset ecosystem — museums, entertainment companies, music labels — are steeped in injustice. Re-works, a project of The Arisen, will research how cultural “value” is created, document alternatives, and blueprint counteracting interventions serving justice.
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Power Project (System)
Power Project is an effort to create a library of tactics and examples for how organizations design governance methods, contracts, and norms embodying MJN's four characteristics of justice. We're developing case studies and surfacing patterns in actions and shared behaviors.
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Narrative (Venture)
We partner with or help values-aligned organizations design and advance narratives that will make justice normal. Our goal is to serve justice by sparking participation in aligned movements, supporting community building, and creating joyful pathways to action for people of all ages & backgrounds.