Since 2023, jasmine Sankofa has been executive director of Movement for Family Power (MFP), an abolitionist movement hub and incubator, cultivating and harnessing community power to end family policing by the “child welfare” apparatus.
A lawyer, scholar, activist, storyteller, birth worker, and bonus/god mama, jasmine’s experience growing up visiting her grandfather in jails and prisons cemented her commitment to abolition and she is grounded in the belief that when we fight, we win. Her work has focused on sex work decriminalization, decarceration, survivor justice, and ending forced family separations, centering the voices and lived experiences of Black women and girls. Prior to joining MFP, jasmine managed decarceration campaigns in Oklahoma and led the mass incarceration storytelling work at FWD.us. While there, she drafted several bills and wrote an issue brief highlighting the punishment of survivors and mothers living in poverty through Oklahoma’s vague and overly broad child abuse and neglect statute.
jasmine also previously worked at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, where she researched and wrote a 121-page report documenting the experiences of mothers separated from their children and at risk of having their parental rights terminated while detained pretrial. jasmine graduated from UCLA School of Law with specializations in critical race studies and public interest law and policy, and from UC San Diego. She intentionally does not capitalize her first name to uplift her chosen last name, “Sankofa,” a West African Adinkra symbol and principle about the power of learning from the past.
