founders
honorary council
board of directors
staff
volunteers

• Jay Jackson, Executive Director
• Dow Gordon, Inside Prisons Program Manager
• Ruby Phillips, Part-Time Staff
• Katie Talbot, Volunteer Coordinator
• Keith Brooks , Community Program Manager
• Verne Garvie, Office Administrator

Ruby Phillips

I feel very honored to be part of the Freedom Project team.  Using the tools of Nonviolent Communication and mindfulness with Freedom Project colleagues, incarcerated folks and returnees has so richly met my needs for inspiration and meaning, and been a way to express my primary values.
Throughout my adult life, I have placed a high value on three levels of work—personal spiritual development, direct services to meet human needs, and increasing understanding of the value of diversity and human rights.

For many years, I have been a practitioner of meditation and mindfulness.  I have experienced tremendous benefits from these practices in my life, and have enjoyed co-founding and participating in communities of people committed to spiritual development.  This sincere, quiet investigation of our nature as human beings, and what prevents us from fulfilling our deepest desires for peace and interpersonal harmony, has been a source of much learning and joy.

I have invested quite a bit of my life energy into creating and maintaining democratic community institutions that serve human needs.  I’ve enjoyed long-term involvement in cooperative and collectively managed endeavors (grocery, bookstore, bakery, restaurant), spent ten years providing direct day-to-day health and personal care for people with disabilities, and initiated and/or participated in several long-term groups to share activities that I enjoy (e.g., singing, reading, NVC, nonviolent direct action, Authentic Movement, wilderness).  Miles Horton says, “We make the road by walking.”  For me, working closely with people through thick and thin has offered numerous opportunities for intimacy, integrity, growth, and play, as we create the world we want to live in.

As a child, I moved ten times before the age of eighteen.  This frequency of moving exposed me to a variety of people and surroundings, as well as the experience of being new in a situation.  For two years, I lived in Karachi, Pakistan, which allowed me to see the reality of day-to-day life for much of the rest of the world, as well as to experience being a minority as a Caucasian American.  This had a profound formative effect on me as a child; ever since then, I have had an abiding passion for diversity, inclusion and human rights.  I feel fortunate to have come of age in the late 1960’s, when many others of my generation around the globe were also seeking and working for the dignity of all people.  I have experienced thirty years of the joy of being a Lesbian and the particular nourishment of our Lesbian community, and have also experienced the suffering of being a sexual minority in the wider culture.  Understanding and healing racism in me, my communities, and the world has been an ongoing adventure in learning and growth.  Nonviolent activism in the service of human rights around the globe, particularly of those who have suffered because of US taxpayer-funded violence, has been a related long-standing passion.  I particularly feel moved by the agony of the Palestinian people and committed to working to end the occupation.  In all of these efforts, I have been blessed to find many kind, open-hearted companions.

Working with the Freedom Project has been a particularly wonderful way to embody my commitment to spiritual growth, community-building and the living tradition of nonviolence.  Through our practice and sharing of the tools of NVC and mindfulness, we are truly able to create the conditions, moment by moment, for the fundamental peace and harmony we all desire so deeply.  I feel so grateful to be part of this life-giving circle.