The Justice Fellowship.
Investing in Our Movement Leaders
Community organizers are essential to the future we’re working together to build. Their energy drives the movement toward racial, economic, gender, and climate justice.
Yet, for all their impact, community organizers are routinely overlooked and left to work without proper recognition or financial support.
Since our founding in 1976, Seeding Justice has championed new ways to invest in developing leaders throughout grassroots movements.
With this award, distributed over three years, we aim to ensure our Justice Fellows are able to continue their pivotal work. In the process, we are investing in individual and family well-being so that our communities may thrive for generations to come.
The Justice Fellowship supports community organizers in Oregon who have demonstrated love, resistance, and resilience in their work bringing people together and nurturing the movement toward justice.
Our Justice Fellows represent a range of identities and center community by amplifying the voices and insights of those most impacted when developing solutions and meet community where they’re at. Through their work, they’ve had a measurable impact by identifying and understanding the root causes of injustice and working to challenge the existing systems that created and perpetuate these problems.
Meet the 2026 Justice Fellows
JT Flowers
JT Flowers is a lifelong Oregonian born and bred in the heart of inner-NE Portland’s historic Albina district. Raised by a single mother and grandmother, neither of whom graduated from college, he went on to earn his BA in Political Science with distinction from Yale University.
He is the founder and Executive Director of Article V, an organization geared towards helping working-class communities across Oregon secure an economic and political future built by their hands and to their benefit.
Prior to Article V, JT served as Senior Advisor and Director of Government Affairs at Albina Vision Trust, the largest community-led development in America, where he helped his community secure over $850 million in direct investment and notch landmark policy wins at every level of government.
JT represents District 5 on TriMet’s Board of Directors, which encompasses large portions of North and Northeast Portland, serves as Board Vice Chair of the Williams & Russell CDC, and is on the board of the Big Yard Foundation.
In 2018, JT became the first Black and first Native Hawaiian Rhodes Scholar in Oregon’s history. He is also a Harry S. Truman Scholar and holds master’s degrees in U.S. History and Music Performance from the University of Oxford.
Reyna Lopez
Reyna Lopez is the President and Executive Director of PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste), Oregon’s farmworker union and one of the state’s longest-standing Latinx-led organizations.
A proud daughter of Mexican immigrant farmworkers, Reyna grew up in Salem, Oregon, and earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Sociology from Willamette University.
Reyna has been a leading organizer, advocate, and coalition-builder working to advance economic, social, and racial justice for farmworkers, immigrants, and working families. Prior to PCUN, she held leadership positions with organizations including For All Families Oregon, Causa, and Our Oregon, where she led major civic engagement, voter outreach, and public policy campaigns.
Since becoming Executive Director in 2018, Reyna has helped strengthen PCUN’s role as a leading voice for farmworkers and immigrant communities in Oregon and nationally.
She serves on several national and regional boards, including Farmworker Justice and the Equitable Food Initiative, and has been recognized with numerous honors for her leadership, including the Immigrant Award from the American Association of Immigration Lawyers of Oregon, Willamette University’s Young Alumni of the Year Award, and Portland Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 recognition.
Meet the 2023 Justice Fellows
Isa Peña
Lamar Wise
Seth Johnstone
Isa Peña is the Director of Strategy at Innovation Law Lab and is based in Oregon.
Isa has been a long-time organizer and leader in the immigrant rights movement in Oregon and formerly worked as the Interim Executive Director of Causa. Isa is a daughter of immigrants from Jalisco, Mexico and is excited to leverage her strengths and skills in relationship building and policy advocacy to help advance immigrant justice.
Lamar Wise began his life of advocacy in college, volunteering as a board member for the Oregon Student Association and Oregon Students of Color Coalition. He served as the Legislative Director for the Oregon Student Association in 2015 and eventually became Executive Director in 2017. During his time at OSA, he focused on fighting against tuition increases, increasing mental health services on campuses, and empowering students to be involved in the electoral process.
After helping register 35,000 students to vote in the 2018 election, Lamar transitioned to working for Oregon AFSCME as a Political Coordinator in 2019, where he has focused on fighting for economic justice to all working families. Lamar is now the political Coordinator for Oregon AFSCME and serves as a member of the Oregon House of Representatives from the 48th district.
Seth Johnstone is the head of the Transgender Justice Program at Basic Rights Oregon.
Seth is a compassionate strategist and community educator. For the last decade, Seth has been working in LGBTQ2SIA+ youth advocacy with a focus on equity training facilitation, homeless youth services, direct advocacy work within community, and policy. Seth loves to use interactive group storytelling as a tool to ground folks in the moment, in order to support groups generating new ways forward. He believes deeply that all people and groups have the ability to grow and change.