Coco Guthrie-Papy is a community organizer, restorative justice practitioner, public policy expert, and born-and-and chosen southerner by way of Savannah, Georgia. She works as Deep Center’s Director of Public Policy and Communications, where she develops the organizations public policy and advocacy positions on education and criminal/juvenile legal reform, as well as working as the organization’s lobbyist.
She received her training as a restorative justice practitioner at the International Institute for Restorative Practices, and has been a Highlander Education Center Greensboro Justice Fellow, a PEN Prison Writing Fellow, a People for the American Way’s Front Line Leader Fellow, a Take a Breath fellow at The Action Lab and most recently, a fellow for Ignite the South. She has served on many southeastern regional boards such as Planned Parenthood Southeast, Georgia 9 to 5 and the City of Savannah Cultural Affairs Commission. She currently serves as a SWOP behind Bars prison mentor, a legal observer for the ACLU of Georgia, and has consulted on multiples electoral campaigns regarding policy development, communications strategy, and movement building in the Deep South. She currently serves on the boards of Access-Reproductive Care Southeast, and Georgian’s for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
She is a proud clinic escort and an abortion doula serving the state of Georgia and believes we can never stop helping one another.