Atlanta’s Center for Civic Innovation celebrated 10 years in business with its annual “Good Trouble” honors at a Dec. 12 ceremony at the Plaza Theatre.
The nonprofit honored 10 individuals and organizations who have created “necessary good trouble” through their work in and around Atlanta. A decade ago, founder and executive director Rohit Malhotra created the center to transform public policy and engage residents. Every year, the center hosts a series of panels and forums to engage and educate residents on topics like voting and education, alongside sharing city-related information through weekly updates and information guides.
It’s a model grounded in data and research that, according to Malhotra, “uses information to drive more informed and engaged residents so that public policy is reflective of people’s needs and voices, but also uses that information to reimagine what public policy could look like.”
The Good Trouble Honors were born out of a goal to celebrate community leaders doing that work. Malhotra named it in honor of the late Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, who lived by the phrase and pioneered activism for civil rights and equality in America.
Malhotra said Lewis called the center “good, necessary trouble.”
“It’s difficult in a time of what feels like so much loss to celebrate, but there is no person who has taught us how important that is than our late Congressman John Lewis,” Malhotra said.
The founder said he asked Lewis how he keeps going, and the congressman responded: “In the midst of protest, we must also leave room for dancing, for singing, for love, for joy.”
Joy was the feeling of the night. 10 honorees were recognized under a series of categories: Policy innovation, Organizing and Advocacy, Investing, Democracy and Transparency and the Inaugural Youth Advocate Award.
Policy and Research Director Kyle Kessler said the policy innovation award was for individual organizations pushing for policy change. Two groups were chosen: Barred Business and Motherhood Beyond Bars.
Barred Business is a membership-based organization founded by formerly incarcerated Black women to help formerly incarcerated people who are disproportionately affected by the U.S. legal system. The group works on advancing electoral strategies and changing policies to create power for people impacted by the legal and prison system.
Motherhood Beyond Bars is a nonprofit dedicated to mothers who are incarcerated and their babies. It aims to provide infants and children a healthy start as they overcome increased social, emotional and behavioral risk from having a parent in prison.
The team often contacts pregnant women as they enter the prison system to assist chosen caregivers and directly provide resources. The caregivers will receive a care box, and the families will receive ongoing support through diapers, formula, clothing and temporary guardianship assistance. The nonprofit also conducts research on the issue and helps with family reunification.
Two Organizing and Advocacy Awards were given out — one for Allison Johnson with the Housing Justice League and one for the Feminist Women’s Health Center.
Center for Civic Innovation Chief of Staff Nadine Phelps said she often thinks about superheroes and pointed to Johnson as a real-life example who has turned her struggle into a superpower.
“She is an extremely courageous advocate, and she advocates from a place of love along with determination,” Phelps said. “She knows how to build allies for her cause without compromising on her goals for justice.”
Johnson is the executive director of the Housing Justice League, an organization that works with renters and homeowners to self-organize and “defend their right to remain.” The group works against gentrification to preserve affordable housing and good living conditions. In accepting her award, Johnson said she couldn’t do it alone.
“This is not just a speech; this is a call to action,” Johnson said. “We need you to be with us.
The Feminist Women’s Health Center was also lauded by the civic innovation staff for its work providing abortion care, particularly when the team receives threats and attacks on a daily basis and exists in a fraught time for reproductive care in Georgia.
The reproductive health clinic and reproductive justice organization provides abortions and health care across Atlanta while centering marginalized groups and movement-building for increased reproductive rights.
Two organizations, WRFG 89.3 and the Referendum Coalition, received the Democracy and Transparency Awards.
“This award is for an individual or organization that believes in information, that believes that information is power, and demands that the voices and experiences of Atlanta residents are listened to and driven and drive better decision making for people and communities,” civic innovation board member Shanti Das said.
WRFG 89.3 was recognized for its work since 1973 as a progressive radio station led by volunteers and funded by listeners. The station also loans out sound systems and equipment to local organizers staging rallies and protests.
“If you don’t see the issues or the genres that are represented on our radio station and you feel that it is, in fact, suppressed in the greater wider media, let this be a call to action to you,” finance director Christopher Hollis said.
The Referendum Coalition was recognized for its broad work in gathering over 116,000 signatures to launch a resident-led effort to have a referendum in Atlanta on the highly controversial Public Safety Training Center known as Cop City.
Thousands of volunteers joined the grassroots movement, and Malhotra had everybody involved stand for recognition at the event. Organizers are still pushing for the Atlanta City Council to let the public vote on the Atlanta Police Foundation project, which leased out public forest land and cost millions of dollars to build.
To the center, the referendum coalition is the “epitome of good trouble.”
The Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund and Dr. Janelle Williams, co-founder of Kindred Futures, were recognized as honorees in the investment category.
The mutual aid fund, known widely as the MAMA fund, started with the onset of COVID-19 to help those disproportionately impacted by the global pandemic. To date, the fund has distributed over $800,000 in no-strings-attached cash payments and financial assistance. It specifically helped Black and brown residents in Metro Atlanta. The fund aims to build alternative systems to traditional funding mechanisms while also providing immediate help to those in need.
In tandem, the center honored Dr. Janelle Williams, the co-founder of Kindred Futures, a nonprofit dedicated to building “long-term Black wealth and prosperity” and closing the racial wealth gap. Williams has done advocacy work for 20 years to transform the lives of Black people in the South.
“This award is really humbling for me because it’s nothing to like being acknowledged by our people, and this is what it means to be a good troublemaker,” Williams said.
The last scheduled award was the inaugural Youth Advocacy Award given to Michaela Shelton, an education advocate who works with Equity in Education in the Model Atlanta Academy, which provides a civic learning series for residents. Shelton is a voter engagement lead working to get out the vote around equity in education.
Shelton said her goal is to get people to vote while knowing exactly what’s at stake — what is on the ballot and how it will impact communities, particularly when it comes to the Gen Z vote.
“This award is for every young person whose potential drives me to fight for a more inclusive democracy, whose doors get slammed in their faces and told they must wait their turn,” Shelton said. “I’m here to kick the door open.”
Between awards, Malhotra led the crowd in a brief activity where each attendee was given a piece of paper and a prompt to write down an answer to the question: What makes Atlanta worth fighting for?
The crowd folded each sheet into a paper plane and tossed them around the theater while Malhotra had people read out answers from the swapped sheets. Many answered similarly — the children, the family and the people.
The founder and executive director turned the energy into an impromptu fundraising session, where he asked for $10,000 in pledges in only four minutes. As people shouted out donations ranging from $10 to $500, he explained that the money would fund the center’s work around elections.
In 2025, all Atlanta City Council seats are up for reelection. So is the Mayoral seat. For elections, the center runs a series of public forums and discussions, creates candidate issue sheets, puts out voter location and registration information and tracks the election results.
In a matter of minutes, the center reached $10,000. But Malhotra presented a surprise twist. All of the money raised wouldn’t go to election work but to a tenth honoree: KaCey Venning.
Venning is the executive director of Helping Empower Youth or HEY!, a nonprofit that provides services to Black youth in Atlanta. HEY! Covers basic needs like water while teaching critical thinking and soft skills. The organization hosts a leadership academy, book festival, “sport for good,” and more while changing to meet the needs of young Black people in the city.
“We wanted to collectively acknowledge and recognize the people who do this work without the credit, the people who take bets on so many people without the credit,” Malhotra said. “There is no one I can think of in Atlanta who does that more than Kacey Venning.”
Rather than simply honor Venning with the title, Malhotra said it was vital to invest in her work financially. He announced the money raised on Dec. 12 would all go to Venning and her continued advocacy.
“Every young person deserves somebody that’s going to fight for them and that I will do it until they don’t want me to do it anymore,” Venning said in an emotional speech.
With the awards passed out and honorees celebrated, Malhotra brought the night to a close with a brass band. With joy, the group walked out of the theatre to hear live music and to the nearby supermarket art space to party late into the night.
“We are here to celebrate,” Malhotra said. “We are here to boldly, boldly celebrate.”
