Shana Griffin
Shana griffin (33) – is radical black feminist, mother of a fourteen year-old, social justice organizer, graduate student, and researcher. Shana grew up in a racially and economically segregated public housing development in downtown New Orleans, where she became acutely aware of economic, racial, and gender disparities fueled by violence and the over-policing of communities of color.
Shana received two undergraduate degrees in History and Sociology from the University of New Orleans in 2000 and is currently completing her Masters degree in Sociology. Shana is a member of the national advisory collective of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and is an advisory member of “Painting Our Courage: A Revolution To End Gender-Based Violence and HIV and AIDS” a documentary project of Mehret Mandefro, Jacqueline Patterson, and Aishah Shahidah Simmons.
Shana currently serves as the Interim Executive Director of the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic, and Project Coordinator of the Sexual & Reproductive Justice Advocacy Project, a New Orleans-based strategic planning and participatory action research initiative. Shana is co-founder of New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative – a multi-dimensional community-based organizing project centered on improving women of color access to quality, affordable, and safe health care services, integrating health provision with the struggles to end gender-based violence and organizing for sexual and reproductive justice, and violent free communities. Shana serves on the Boards of Women With A Vision, Nowe Miasto Limited Equity Housing Cooperative, and the New Orleans Institute for Research in Community and Regional Development, and is assisting with development of the New Orleans Women of Color Resource and Organizing Center, which will serve as a resource and organizing hub to nurture grassroots organizing and activism to end violence against women of color, linking struggles against the violence of poverty, incarceration, environmental racism, housing discrimination, economic exploitation, and medical experimentation and forced sterilization. Shana organizes locally and nationally with many organizations on issues pertaining to prison abolition, gender and racial justice, housing affordability, sexual health and reproductive justice, just sustainabilities, and human and community development.