University of Mississippi Medical Center |
A Proposal to Establish the Mississippi Violence Injury Prevention (VIP) Program
Research Topics
Rukia Lumumba is a Community Partner with the People’s Advocacy Institute and Community Co-Investigator with the University of Mississippi Medical Center project A Proposal to Establish the Mississippi Violence Injury Prevention (VIP) Program and is a member of the Steering Committee and Community Engagement Workgroup.
A dedicated and accomplished coalition builder and legal professional, Rukia Lumumba is co-founding director of the People’s Advocacy Institute and co-director of the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives. She is a member of the Community Engagement Workgroup and the Steering Committee for the CFVP network.
Rukia has spent over 15 years working with communities to alter the landscape of injustice in American policies, cities, and courts. She works at the intersections of criminal and electoral justice engaging residents in community-led policy efforts, community-led public safety initiatives and an intentional grassroots process for cultivating ideas and developing solutions to violence, punitive legal systems, and social injustice facing far too many communities. Her work is centered on the belief that community agency is what architects robust systems change and is needed to build new institutional power that paves the way for a more just system rooted in restoration, safety, economic development, and self-determination.
Rukia is responsible for the development of many public safety and health programs. Through her leadership she co-founded Strong Arms of Mississippi, Mississippi’s only credible messenger transformative justice mentorship program which serves as an alternative to detention for youth in Rankin County and Hinds County. She is responsible for the development of Mississippi’s only Cure Violence Firearm Prevention Program – Operation Good Cure Violence. She is currently working to launch a Common Justice Modeled alternative to incarceration and victim support restorative justice program in Jackson, MS and is partnering with University of Mississippi Medical Center to develop Mississippi’s first hospital-based violence intervention program.
Rukia holds a bachelor’s degree in political science with an emphasis in international relations from Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi; a Juris Doctorate from Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. and has studied law and politics in South Africa at the University of Forte Hare and the University of the Western Cape.
Affiliated Projects