April Goggans is an organizer, disrupter, abolitionist, single mother of one adult daughter, originally from Colorado Springs, Colorado she is now a proud Southeast DC resident since 2006. Ms. Goggans became a Core Organizer with Black Lives Matter DC in September of 2015. Her organizing work focuses on community power building, affordable housing and tenants rights, labor, large scale direct action organizing, intra-community violence, policing and police brutality. She recently launched #KeepDC4Me. #KeepDC4Me is a leaderFULL coalition working to find non-police solutions to intra-community violence in ways that disrupt, confront, and dismantle systems of state sanctioned violence that displace and criminalize Black people through political education, building community power, and direct action.  April has been organizing for more than 25 years and almost 12 of those years have been in southeast Washington, DC.

Ms. Goggans received her Masters Degree in Clinical Sociology from the University of Northern Colorado (December 2006). Ms. Goggans holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Black Studies and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology: Social Issues, and a minor in Cultural Anthropology; has participated on a research team that researched Dearfield, Colorado, an all Black town; is the recipient of two Departmental Scholar awards; and is a Stryker Scholar, a graduate leadership program which includes a substantial scholarship. She completed a graduate professional project on Reparations for Slavery after six-weeks of research in DC in 2002.  She was an intern for the National Association of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) in Washington, D.C. and the Western Regional office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles, where she later became a paralegal. While in graduate school she was also on the National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES) Executive Board.

As Tenants’ Association president at Marbury Plaza Apartments in Southeast DC, April led a two-year rent strike resulting in a historic settlement with the owners, Attorney General of DC, and the Director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) securing $5 million in property repairs and a 50 percent rent abatement (75 percent abatement for elderly and disabled tenants).

During her 8 years as a Core Organizer with Black Lives Matter DC April has built and led local and national coalitions. She has participated in, coordinated and led direct actions of every size and mobilized thousands of people. These include disrupting the U.S. Council of Mayors Conference and mass actions like Disrupt J20. April continues to lead campaigns that successfully force national organizations to shift the way they organize in DC. 

April was a Founding Board Member of the Diverse City Fund (2011), past Interim Board Member of the Washington Peace Center, a Founding Member of Eaton House, and is currently President of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) Chapter 250 at the Administration for Children and Families Headquarters.

April has an unwavering belief that our communities already have everything they need to thrive. She does “the work” guided by a proverb that says “what you do for me, without me, you do to me.”