Q&A with Anza Becnel, Founder and Executive Director, Growing Real Alternatives Everywhere (GRAE)

A Decade of Justice: GRAE Celebrates 10 Years of Breaking Barriers and Building
Stronger Communities
As Growing Real Alternatives Everywhere (GRAE) marks its 10-year anniversary, the
organization is celebrating a decade of challenging inequities in the justice system and creating
pathways to opportunity for underserved communities.

Through innovative initiatives such as its community-based Warrant Clinics, GRAE helps
individuals address outstanding warrants and navigate legal barriers that can disrupt
employment, financial stability, and everyday life. By bringing together community organizers,
legal professionals, and local partners, GRAE is demonstrating how grassroots solutions can
create meaningful change.

We spoke with Anza Becnel, GRAE’s Founder and Executive Director, during his travels in
Cairo, Egypt! about the organization’s evolution, the impact of its work, and how its partnership
with Community Partners supports its mission.

QUESTIONS:

As GRAE celebrates its 10-year anniversary, what inspired you to launch the
organization, and how has your vision evolved over the past decade?
What inspired me to start GRAE was that I wanted grassroots organizers like myself to have an
organization they could go to try new ideas. I wanted for myself a space to experiment with a
new organizing model that I believe would work, without having oversight of a large
organization, possibly not believing in and wanting to invest in the same vision. For me, GRAE
is a laboratory where social scientists must work out a new innovative way of organizing that
acknowledges societal and technological advances.

GRAE’s Warrant Clinics offer an innovative, community-centered approach to addressing
legal barriers. Can you explain how the clinics work and why they are so important for
the individuals and families you serve?

Warrant clinics are meant to work exactly as traditional courts do, with the addition of the
answer to this question: If a community created a court for itself, what would it look like? How
clinics work is that GRAE partners with a grassroots local organization in the area where we are
hosting a clinic. We offer a mini grant to this local community organization to perform outreach
to the community as a trusted messenger in the area. Next, we meet with judges and the
prosecution to discuss the parameters of the clinic. For example, some clinics only address
traffic violations, while others might address misdemeanor and felony warrants. The courts get
to choose which cases they feel comfortable with dismissing or setting new court dates for.
Once the decisions about the cases are made, a flyer is created with a QR code and the phone
number so that the community can register for the clinic. We register participants for months
before the clinic because the warrant clinic is not an event where we release a flyer and wait to
see who arrives. We create a docket for the warrant clinic just like a traditional court has a
docket for court every day. Once the flyers are created, the community organizations can then
go out and start to register people. Once we have the desired number of registrations, we then
cut registration off, and we begin to plan the clinic. The community creates a court out of the
culture of the community so there is food. There is music, there’s childcare, there is little to no
law enforcement, and the location is in the community, not at the courthouse. On the day of the
clinic, participants walk up, are escorted into the community courtroom and then their warrant is
lifted and they’re given a new court date or their cases are dismissed. After the clinic, we do a
post-clinic follow-up, organizing by checking in on participants, making sure they attended their
next court date, as well as speaking with them about other options for themselves, such as a
job, registering to vote, or going to school.

Looking back over the past 10 years, what accomplishments are you most proud of? Is
there a particular story or experience that illustrates the difference GRAE has made in
someone’s life?

Over the last 10 years, I believe I am most proud of the expansive geography that Gray has
been able to cover. From Portland, Oregon, to San Antonio, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama, to
Detroit, Michigan, and up to Jersey City, New Jersey. Gray has been able to help tens of
thousands of people, mostly low-income and people of color, to alleviate a serious stress and
barrier in their lives. We say we’re helping real people in real time. Our goal is for people to
have a broken taillight and be able to make it home alive.

There are several stories that illustrate the power of the warrant clinic. At the very first warrant
clinic in 2017, a guy named Isaiah Mayes hadn’t had a driver’s license since 1998 and owed
Orleans Parish $28,000. His liens and fees were taken down to nine dollars, and all of his
warrants were lifted, and he was able to get a driver’s license. Shortly after, one of his children
was in need of serious medical attention for a brain injury, and he said if it wasn’t for the warrant
clinic helping him to get a driver’s license, he would not have been able to drive his son from
New Orleans to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas.

As a fiscally sponsored partner of Community Partners, how has this relationship
supported GRAE’s growth and ability to advance its mission?

Community Partners have been the most wonderful partners, no pun intended, I could ever
hope for. The professionalism of the organization in the outward display of contracting and
networking invisibility has made GRAE appear as a serious, established organization.
Community partners have made it so much easier to process payments, handle all back-office
issues, and the potential for individual giving and networking is vast.

As GRAE enters its next decade, what challenges and opportunities lie ahead, and what
is your vision for creating a more equitable and accessible justice system?

GRAE’s 10-year anniversary is not about the past 10 years. The 10-year anniversary is about
the upcoming 10 years and all the opportunities that it holds. We believe that the warrant clinic
can be a serious upgrade to the justice system in the United States as well as around the world.
The court system we know of now was created many years ago by people in power. We live in a
New World now with new technology in a new society. Our goal is to get a state Supreme Court
and eventually the United States Supreme Court to legitimize a community court system in the
United States.

These next 10 years will be spent traveling the world, learning about different things. Justice
systems from communal to tribunal, and searching for ways to make the war clinic more
impactful.

Learn more about GRAE here.