#ItTakesRoots to #GrowtheResistance came into being as a collaborative network in 2016 after years of relationship building with the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ),and Right to the City Alliance (RTC) alongside the Center for Story-based Strategy and The Ruckus Society.

The ITR actions and movement building centers around leadership and is strengthened through the power of Indigenous, urban and rural communities on the front lines of environmental, energy and climate, racial, gender, and housing  justice in North America. With the energy and power cultivated within these relationships this coalition is making great strides to regenerate economies and nurture the health of our communities.

ITR is a multiracial, multicultural, multi-generational alliance of networks and alliances representing over 200 organizations and affiliates in American Indian traditional and tribal Native lands in U.S., grassroots organizations from all 50 states, First Nations in Canada, and front line community groups in the provinces, and territories which are led by women, gender nonconforming people, and peoples of color, which is the outcome of years of organizing and relationship building that addresses our diversity and unique cultures.

Each alliance is led by grassroots organizations, and each brings unique contributions to our collective work. IEN brings a strong framework of environmental justice, indigenous sovereignty and treaty rights; CJA contributes the elements of strategy for a Just Transition to a regenerative economy; GGJ brings connections with global movements and grassroots feminism and gender justice; and RTC brings deep experience in housing & land rights and in coordinating trans-local actions.

The ITR membership collaborates closely with Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), People’s Climate Movement and Design Action Collective that utilizes opportunities for convergence to build power at the local, state, tribal and regional levels.

The It Takes Roots collaboration between grassroots social movements began during the organizing for the Peoples Climate March in 2014, and continued through international climate justice mobilizations to Paris COP21 and Morocco COP22 thru to this latest COP24 in Poland, a Peoples Caravan during the 2016 elections from the Republican National Convention to the Democratic National Convention, and ITR participated in the People’s Climate Movement March in April 2017. At the end of June 2018 the It Takes Roots participated in IEN’s Protecting Mother Earth Conference on Nisqually lands in the Pacific Northwest, and in September staged a multi-day series of actions, workshops, demonstrations, and delivered messages from Indigenous Peoples from the Global South in opposition to Governor Jerry Brown’s Global Climate Action Summit.

ITR continues to collaborate and build a Visionary Opposition into 2019 and beyond in a steady and evolving approach as the political and social landscape continues to shift under chaotic and myopic leadership model.