The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois is a non-profit, non-partisan organization, dedicated to protecting freedom, liberty, equality and justice for all within the United States. With a membership of more than 22,000 across Illinois - a total of more than 400,000 across the nation - the ACLU accomplishes its goals through litigation, lobbying and education programs. The work of the ACLU is based upon, but not limited to, protecting the liberties and freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution, especially those contained in the Bill of Rights.

Founded in London in 1961, Amnesty International is a Nobel Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with over 1.8 million members worldwide. Amnesty International undertakes research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights.

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, established in 1997, serves as a center for information and teaching about the Holocaust and contemporary aspects of genocide, houses a resource library, and provides speakers for events. The Center teaches and provides support for teaching about the Holocaust and genocide around the work, past and present, and the relationship to human rights questions.

Loyola’s Center for the Human Rights of Children represents, coordinates, and stimulates efforts to understand, protect and apply the human rights of children in the face of injustice and poverty of body, mind, and spirit.

The Center seeks guidance and inspiration from the tradition of Catholic teachings on social justice as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Center on Housing and Eviction Rights (COHRE) promotes and protects the right to housing for everyone, everywhere. To achieve this, COHRE has developed a varied work program, guided by international human rights law, and designed to reach as may people as possible. The Center’s work involves housing rights training; research and publications; monitoring, preventing and documenting forced evictions; fact-finding missions; housing and property restitution; women's housing rights; and active participation and advocacy within the United Nations and regional human rights bodies. COHRE is committed to local and national capacity-building in the area of economic, social and cultural rights and places particular emphasis on securing respect for the housing rights of traditionally disadvantaged groups, including women, children, ethnic or other minorities and indigenous peoples.

Responding to the call of Latin America’s poor majorities, Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN) is an interfaith information and action network that mobilizes religious leaders and congregations in Illinois to advance peace, justice and human rights in our hemisphere.  CRLN’s 600 members include lay leaders, pastors, rabbis, bishops, denominational executives, seminary professors, and men and women religious.  Many have traveled to Latin America.  Others have associates there.  Through speakers, workshops, informational updates, action alerts, advocacy initiatives, annual visits to Latin America, and meetings with U.S. policy-makers, CRLN engages religious leaders to speak out for more just U.S. policies in our hemisphere.

Citizens Alert, founded in 1967, is Chicago's only police accountability organization working for systemic change in law enforcement agencies and for human, effective law enforcement while advocating for victims of police brutality and misconduct. The goals of the organization are to make law enforcement agencies accountable to the public by acting as civil rights advocates for victims of police brutality and abuse; providing information, counsel, and referrals; monitoring police conduct and policies to assure greater accountability to the public; building coalitions to involve other organizations in social justice issues; recommending policy changes that encourage more humane and effective law enforcement; and educating the public on criminal justice matters.

Founded in 1996, in response to the federal mandate to demolish more than 100,000 units of public housing nationwide - 18,000 of those units in Chicago - the Coalition to Protect Public Housing (CPPH) is an advocacy group of public housing residents, community-based organizations, religious institutions, businesses, and non-profit organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Community Renewal Society, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, and Metropolitan Tenants Organization all working to protect the rights of individuals living in public housing and to ensure the future of public housing.

The Council on Crime and Justice, a leader in the field of criminal and social justice for over 40 years, provides an independent voice for a balanced approach to criminal justice. The Council has been at the forefront of many new programs in such areas as offender services, alternative sanctions, victim's rights, and restorative justice. The mission of the Council is to build community capacity to address the causes and consequences of crime and violence through research, demonstration, and advocacy.

Freedom House is a non-denominational nonprofit organization established in 1983 to address the needs of homeless and/or indigent refugees seeking asylum in either the U.S. or Canada. Guided by the belief that all persons deserve to live free from oppression and deserve to be treated with justice, compassion and dignity, Freedom House's goals are to offer a continuum of care and services to persons living in its shelter, as well as other refugees in need; and, to advocate for systemic change which more fully recognizes the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.

Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) is a nonprofit, community-based research organization that originated in 1988 as a collaborative effort between Ramsey County Human Services, Communidades Latinos Unidos en Servicio (CLUES), and Metropolitan State University to address the lack of information about Latinos and Latino issues in Minnesota’s public discourse. HACER is housed within the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA).

HACER’s mission, is to provide the Minnesota Latino community the ability to create and control information about itself in order to affect institutional decisions and public policy. 

HACER identifies research needs and delivers quality research products that strengthen the Latino communities of Minnesota. We do so through collaborative research efforts that are timely, methodologically sound and culturally appropriate.

HACER engages in partnerships with community members to inform policy around immigration, education, public health, housing, criminal justice, social welfare, employment and income disparities, public safety, community development, migrant work, and demographic change.

HACER also facilitates cooperation among agencies that serve the Latino community, and evaluates government and nonprofit programs that target Latinos in the state.