Kerry Ellington

Kerry Ellington is a freedom fighter, grassroot community organizer and radical educator, recently recognized by Connecticut Magazine as, “Connecticut’s 40 Under 40”. As a Community Organizer she organizes to address issues of police violence, housing, community and economic justice. Kerry currently serves as a Community & Economic Justice Organizer at New Haven Legal Assistance Association.

Kerry Ellington, a native of New York, originally came to Connecticut to study journalism at Quinnipiac University. She spent five years as a teaching assistant at Common Ground High School in New Haven, where she ran after-school programs, did social justice learning with the students, and played a key leadership role in advancing conversations about institutional bias, anti-racism and racial justice culture at the school. Prior to her work at Common Ground, Kerry was Youth Organizer Coordinator at Youth Rights Media, where she supported young people to run organizing campaigns around alternative schools and the school to prison pipeline. She began her organizing career as a at Teach Our Children, a parent-led organizing group in fighting for anti-racist educational justice in New Haven Public Schools.

Kerry has maintained a deep personal commitment to unpaid, grassroots community organizing outside of her professional work. Since 2010, she has organized with victims, families and communities impacted by police violence across Connecticut, She has helped organize statewide crisis response efforts, legal funds, direct actions, and campaigns addressing the crisis of state sanctioned violence.