In May 2016, I met Ms. Norouzi when I provided services for Mr. Nader, Breaking through Power.
"Parisa Norouzi has over 20 years of experience
working with nonprofit organizations and organizing communities. After
an early career as an organizer in the environmental movement, Parisa
co-founded the city-wide community organizing group Empower DC in 2003,
an organization which works to build the confident self-advocacy and
organized political power of low-moderate income DC residents with a
focus on fighting the displacement of residents amid DC’s gentrification
boom.
At Empower DC she has led the organization’s Child Care
for All Campaign and the People’s Property Campaign, leading to
victories including winning funding for child care vouchers which ended
the city’s waiting list for those services, and changing DC law to
provide opportunity for public input into the “surplus and disposition”
process for public property. Since 2001, Parisa has worked alongside
the historic Ivy City community to record previously undocumented
history through the Ivy City History Project, and work towards
revitalization without displacement in that community. Most recently
she led a successful environmental justice lawsuit that halted the
operation of a polluting tour bus parking lot at the Alexander Crummell
School, a cherished African American historic site in the heart of the
Ivy City community, an area which already suffers poor air quality.
Parisa
graduated with honors from Marlboro College in Vermont with a degree in
Environmental Policy and Interest Group Politics and later completed a
Masters in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire
University. She was a founding member of the Ella Jo Baker Intentional
Community Cooperative, an affordable housing cooperative for community
activists, and resided in the co-op for 10 years serving as its
President for a portion of that time.
Parisa is passionate about
social, racial and environmental justice, is a lover of nature, animals
and all things vintage. Of mixed Iranian-American heritage, Parisa
seeks to build bridges among groups of people around shared goals in
order to bring about improvements for the whole. She has received
several awards for her work, including the
Ella Baker Award,
awarded by Mentors of Minorities in Education (M.O.M.I.E.S Tlc), the
I’ll be there Award, awarded by DC Jobs with Justice, and the Exemplary
Community Activist Award, awarded by the Federation of Citizens
Associations of DC. In 2013, Parisa was selected to participate in the
national IGNITE Fellowship for Women of Color in
the Social Sector and in 2014 she was awarded the Petra Fellowship for
unsung champions for justice. In late 2014 she earned her greatest
reward upon becoming a mother to daughter Aziza Bonita. "