Rinku Sen has been organizing for racial justice since she was young. She has supported fellow leaders and organizers as a trainer, coach, convener, fundraiser, and foundation trustee. She started as a student organizer at Brown University. While working with the US Student Association, she helped train students in the principles of community organizing. She built on this practice at the Center for Third World Organizing, first as an intern in the Movement Activist Apprenticeship program, then as staff. There, she organized with campaigns around environment justice, housing, education, welfare reform, and police violence from New York, to Oakland, Los Angeles, and more.
She was the Executive Director of Race Forward and Publisher of their award-winning news site Colorlines. With her leadership, Race Forward generated some of the most impactful racial justice successes of recent years, including Drop the I-Word, a campaign for media outlets to stop referring to immigrants as “illegal,” resulting in the Associated Press, USA Today, LA Times, and many more outlets changing their practice. She was also the architect of the Shattered Families report, which identified the number of kids in foster care whose parents had been deported.
Here is a selection of writings from Rinku about race and racial justice:
- “Indian Americans are Rising in American Politics. We Wouldn’t Be Here Without the Civil Rights Movement” with Reshma Shamasunder — San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 2024
- “Funding Narrative Change: An Assessment and Framework” with Mik Moore – Convergence Partnership, September 2022
- “How to Do Intersectionality” — Narrativeinitiative.org, December 2020
- “Why Today’s Social Revolutions Include Kale, Medical Care and Help With Rent” — Zocalo Public Square, July 1, 2020, named in Zocalo Top Ten Stories of 2020
- “Grantmaking with a Racial Justice Lens” — Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, January 2020
- “How to Organize Asian Americans: Notes from Two Generations” — Reappropriate.com
- “These Farmworkers Know How to End Sexual Harassment in the Fields. Will Wendy’s Listen?” — The Nation, March 15, 2018
- “The Lefty Critique of TimesUp is Tired and Self-Defeating” — TheNation.com, January 9, 2018
- “’We’ Includes Me” Review of Jessmyn Ward’s Men We Reap“ — Public Books, April 1, 2014
- “Minorities? Try People of Color” — CNN.com, In America, May 18, 2012
- “Immigrants Are Losing the Policy Fight. But That’s Beside the Point” — Colorlines.com, September 17, 2012
