News

Spring 2010 Grants

Ensuring Economic Justice

  • Brandworkers International NY $15,000
    Despite working for some of the world's most profitable enterprises, retail and food workers are paid wages too low to live on, and face insecure work schedules and unaffordable health care. The economic crisis has made work conditions even more precarious by creating mass layoffs without adequate notice or severance, and reduced work hours. Brandworkers International was founded to train workers in the retail and food industries to organize workplace justice campaigns. 'Focus on the Food Chain' is a crucial area for their work. In 2010, they announced a $340,000 settlement with a high-end fish processor that had been subjecting its employees to hazardous conditions, verbal abuse, and wage theft. Currently they are concentrating on educating and organizing the employees at a sweatshop beverage processing plant and a food delivery service.

  • Brooklyn Movement Center $10,000
    Central Brooklyn (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, and surrounding neighborhoods) faces relentless gentrification, failing schools, irresponsible development, and other serious challenges. But the people of Central Brooklyn do not have a strong voice in the public discussions taking place right now among New York City policy makers and advocacy groups. The Brooklyn Movement Center (MC) is a new organization that seeks to regenerate and re-energize the civic life in Central Brooklyn. It will bring the voices of predominantly people of color and working class residents of Central Brooklyn to the table in policy discussions. MC develops neighborhood leaders to create change through direct, local action.

  • Center for Immigrant Families $10,000
    For close to a decade, high-stakes testing has been forced on New York City public schools students. The testing currently begins in third grade, exposing eight- and nine-year-old students to pressure, competition, and failure. Students who attend schools with limited resources are already at a disadvantage and are the very students who are the most harmed by high-stakes testing policy: the last decade has seen alarming increases in the rates of African American and Latino/a students leaving school because they failed to pass the standardized tests. Yet the Bloomberg administration plans to expand punitive testing to kindergarten through second grade.

    Center for Immigrant Families, a collective of low income immigrant women of color in uptown Manhattan, challenges the implementation of kindergarten through second grade testing in their district. They are organizing parents, educators and administrators to prevent it. Through this initiative they are working to improve their public school district, including making it easier for immigrant parents to be involved in their children's education. Successes include the implementation of an admissions lottery that took away the power of administrators to handpick students, ensuring that the admission process is more equitable and less likely to result in a segregated district.

  • Eye Openers: Youth Against Violence Organization $5,000
    When there's limited interaction between African-American and Latino/a groups, prejudices are more likely to abound on both sides, sometimes leading to violence and hate crimes. The youth in Eye Openers defies structures that keep people of color competing and fighting each other. They have formed a vital organization in Staten Island that brings African-American and immigrant Latino/a youth together. They learn about their shared struggles -- such as lack of access to a good education and decent jobs -- and the systems that create and perpetuate these conditions. Every year, they hold a Leadership Youth Summit to train young people to become anti-violence and racial justice educators in their communities. Other projects focus on immigration reform, environmental justice issues, and access to education for undocumented youth.

  • Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project $10,000
    Entering into the New York City public school system as an immigrant student with limited English proficiency is an overwhelming challenge. Students must quickly adjust to a new country, a new school system, and a new language. Often, they fall through the cracks: about 32% of new immigrant students drop out. The influx of new Haitian immigrant students who have been traumatized by the January 2010 earthquake have additional challenges to success at school. Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project is a youth-led organization that advocates and acts as a safety net for immigrant students and families. They work to make sure the district's educational programs meets the needs of immigrant youth, and they create an empowering environment for youth to build skills and develop their leadership. This year, they are launching an Emergency Placement for English Language Learners to ensure that the earthquake survivors who are being sent to the U.S. are placed appropriately within the school system and can access the services they need to gain some stability in their lives.

  • Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition $10,000
    In New York City, low-waged workers and the working poor are primarily immigrants and people of color. Their livelihoods are constantly threatened by wage theft, union busting, harassment, and anti-immigrant attacks. Building on the historic partnership between the faith community and the labor movement, the Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition organizes to end economic exploitation and workplace discrimination. Their current economic justice campaign seeks to unionize security officers, mostly African American men who currently receive poverty-level wages, no benefits, and very little training. Partnering with Local 32BJ, they have successfully brought African-American clergy from churches and mosques across the city to join the effort. To date, 32BJ has won contracts with 20 security contractors in the New York area, bringing almost 10,000 security officers into the union.

  • Met Council Research and Education Fund $15,000
    Most New Yorkers live in rented apartments, and almost all low, moderate, and middle-income people in New York rent their homes. But the availability of affordable housing New York City has shrunk so dramatically that the lowest income New Yorkers who need a place to live simply cannot find an apartment they can afford. The result is more homeless individuals and families and more severely over-crowded apartments. But even tenants who live in rent-stabilized apartments aren't secure: current laws allow landlords to push them out using increasingly vicious displacement strategies, and tenant protections are too weak to do much good. All the while, the real estate industry, with its enormous resources and influences, continues to attack affordable housing programs.

    The Met Council believes that every New Yorker deserves safe, decent, affordable housing. For 45 years, they have been helping tenants get better services and repairs and educating tenants through a monthly newspaper, weekly call-in radio show, and their volunteer-staffed tenant hotline. While organizing tenants and tenant associations has not been their focus in recent years, they are now returning to organizing and outreach efforts -- including holding regular meetings across the city and hosting forums to bring more tenants in as active members of the housing movement.

  • New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) $15,000
    When they can find work, newly arrived immigrants in New York City usually find it in unregulated sectors, such construction and restaurants. This leaves them vulnerable to exploitation. The money they do earn is in jeopardy as they contend with predatory financial companies that target new, primarily undocumented immigrants. Many recent immigrants are unaware of their rights to access basic educational and health services. New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) develops the leadership of the newest and most vulnerable Latino/a immigrants living in Queens to ensure that they can build social, political and economic power in their communities. Their membership is currently conducting a campaign that draws public attention to fraudulent and predatory financial services in their community, educates new immigrants about fraud, and advocate for the regulation of these companies.

  • New York City Community Garden Coalition $5,000
    As vibrant, lush, and permanent as New York's community gardens may seem, their continued existence is not assured. These safe and open public spaces play a vital role in the community, especially in low-income neighborhoods where fresh produce is not easily available. Residents not only can grow food for their families and to sell for extra income, but they also develop leadership skills and participate in community education programs that tackle issues such as environmental and racial justice. In the mid 1990's developers built condo after luxury condo across the city, frequently on the former site of a community garden. The city showed little concern that a majority of the gardens were important gathering places and education centers for low-income neighborhoods with few open space resources. In 1998-2001, a coalition of community garden groups fought hard to preserve the gardens, ultimately securing a 10-year agreement with the city. As the agreement expires, the coalition is working to make all NYC community gardens permanent, ensuring continued access communityk-managed open spacefor all New Yorkers.

  • New York State Youth Leadership Council $5,000
    For many young people, the end of high school is a time for hatching big dreams and plans: college, travel, a great job. Yet each year, 65,000 undocumented high school seniors graduate to face a severely limited future. Although they were brought to the U.S. as children and raised here, these youths' immigration status and this country's increasingly severe immigration laws prevent them from doing what other students take for granted: applying to scholarships that require U.S. citizenship, traveling outside of the country, entering the job market legally.

    New York State Youth Leadership Council fights for improved access to higher education for undocumented youth and legalization for the youth and their families. One of the oldest and most active immigrant youth organizations, NYSYL is led by undocumented youth working on both national and local campaigns. They are a vital part of the nation-wide effort to pass federal legislation (the DREAM Act) that will provide certain undocumented students a pathway to citizenship as they pursue higher education. Their New York campaign will make sure that undocumented youth know they have the right to attend state schools and to receive in-state tuition.

  • NY-NJ Teamsters for a Democratic Union $10,000
    The economic crisis has hit poor and working class New Yorkers the hardest. Good jobs with living wages and affordable healthcare are in constant danger - including jobs held by Teamster members. For thirty years, the NY-NJ Teamsters for a Democratic Union has been fighting for the rights of all workers, and in this economy, they're working harder than ever. They achieved a major victory last year, as members participated in the Teamster's campaign to save the healthcare and win wage increases for Wall Street's commercial movers - mostly young men of color who are some of the lowest-paid and hardest-working New Yorkers on Wall Street. This year, they are working with with Local 802 to launch the most ambitious union organizing campaign in the city: to organize the 1,200 nonunion, low-income workers of color at FreshDirect. True to their mission to build a grassroots labor movement for racial and social justice, TDU is partnering with community groups, immigrant rights organizations and progressive politicians to educate the workers about their rights. The Teamster's aim is to prevent FreshDirect from intimidating and retaliating against workers who are organizing and to win a union contract that provides workers with living wages and health benefits.

  • Queens Congregations United for Action $10,000
    Job losses and reduced wages, high rents and overcrowded homes, low-performing schools, gang violence and a lack of positive activities for youth all create challenges for the primarily low-income, immigrant residents of Eastern Queens.  Queens Congregations United for Action (QCUA) connects individuals and the faith community to create solutions to problems with housing, education, employment and violence. Their vision is to train leaders n their community to identify and change the policies and structures that perpetuate social injustice. They have celebrated several impressive victories, including expanding affordable housing at the Willetts Point development in Queens, reversing school budget cuts n 2008. Not resting on their laurels, the broup is linking housing, immigration reform, and youth training.

  • Right to the City NYC $15,000
    Before the current economic crisis, luxury residential developments were springing up with increasing intensity in low-income neighborhoods - threatening to gentrify the areas and push out the current residents. But in past year many construction projects have been halted, and more than four thousand completed condominiums sit vacant. Meanwhile, low-income families struggle to find housing in a shrinking affordable housing market.

    Right to the City NYC's Condo Conversion Campaign calls on the city to convert vacant condo units into permanently affordable housing for low-income New Yorkers. A coalition of over twenty successful grassroots organizations (many of them North Star grantees), Right to the City NYC is part of a national alliance of racial, economic, and environmental justice organizations building a united response to urban gentrification and displacement. Their powerful human rights framework puts forward a new kind of urban politics that asserts that all urban residents -- particularly the disenfranchised -- not only have a right to the city itself, but also a fundamental a right to shape and design the environments in which they live.

  • School Bus and Access-A-Ride Drivers Education Fund $10,000
    School bus and Access-A-Ride drivers in New York City struggle against a host of unfair labor practices such as unreasonable firings and lengthy suspensions for minor infractions. In theory, their union should help bring their grievances to management and advocate on their behalf. But Local 1181, controlled by the Mafia since the 1970s, is one of the most corrupt unions in the history of the labor movement in New York City.

    The workers have had enough: this year they began the School Bus and Access-A-Ride Drivers Education Fund to educate workers about their rights. The fund is developing active groups of workers who will build a more democratic, progressive union that reflects the demographics of the workers (people of color and women) and truly represents them. They seek to raise a strong worker voice in their fight for better conditions.

  • Street Vendor Project $10,000
    Approximately 20,000 individuals sell merchandise and food on the streets of New York City. Vendors deepen the cultural richness of New York City, create jobs and spur economic development, yet continue to face numerous obstacles to their businesses. Street Vendor Project is a grassroots, vendor-led group that organizes vendors to stand up for their rights and develop the skills to tackle common problems such as limits on vending licenses, police harassment, and displacement through poor urban planning. Their membership now exceeds 1,000 members, and reflects the ethnic diversity of NYC street vendors. They recently succeeded in securing the creation of 1,000 Green Cart permits for selling fresh fruit and vegetables..

  • Teachers Unite $5,000
    Low-income communities rely on public schools as a gateway to opportunity. So the pressing problems that public school teachers face -- growing job insecurity, scarcity of resources, and dangerous and heavily policed facilities -- also negatively impact the communities that they serve. Both national and local education policy, and the teachers unions themselves, are complicit in denying low-income communities of color access to high-quality public education. Teachers Unite educates and organizes teachers to get involved in social justice campaigns that impact the schools where they teach, and to fight for a more democratic teachers union. This year, they have joined Right To The City -- NYC as the only coalition member based in public education work. Recognizing education reform as a human rights and urban justice issue, they are launching on a Community Control Campaign that will put up a strong fight against mayoral control of schools when it sunsets in five years.

  • VAMOS Unidos $15,000
    Last August, a fruit vendor in Queens named Maria was stopped and served a $2000 fine for selling without a license. When she attempted to pack up and take the fruit home to her family, the officer viciously yelled at her and confiscated her inventory of $300 worth of fruit. Getting a license in the near-term is not an option. Due to a cap on vending licenses, only 5,000 of the approximately 20,000 street vendors in New York City can legally sell their products. This leaves over 15,000 vendors vulnerable to arrest and harassment by police, with regular fines and confiscations of merchandise. VAMOS Unidos organizes street vendors throughout New York City to increase access to permits and monitor abusive behavior of law enforcement officers. 70% of its members are women, and 20% are representatives of indigenous groups. Their vision is the opening of a gateway to opportunity that has served generations of recently arrived New Yorkers.

Ending Institutional Racism and Discrimination

  • Critical Resistance -- New York City $10,000
    City officials acclaim the decreased crime rate statistics in New York City, ignoring the damage that over-policing inflicts on low-income communities of color, such as the South Bronx. Young men of color are disproportionally arrested and incarcerated. And the neighborhood itself, already burdened by projects that other neighborhoods refuse -- such as waste transfer stations and sewage treatment facilities -- is also a repository for jails and detention centers. Critical Resistance-NYC (CR-NYC) wants to end society's reliance on police and policing. They won a recent victory when the Bloomberg administration ended a plan to build a jail at the Oak Point in the Bronx. Rebuffed, the city want to build a massive $650 million jail in the Hunts Point community of the Bronx. CR-NYC, in coalition with other grassroots groups, is organizing to stop this project, too.

  • Jahajee Sisters Empowering Indo-Caribbean Women $5,000
    Although Indo-Caribbean women are enthnically South Asian, their recent ancestors migrated to the Caribbean. With a culture and history distinct from other South Asian groups, they straddle multiple worlds, often isolated and without a voice. In New York City their unique struggles have long gone unattended with no organizations that work on issues specific to their community. As reported gender-based violence against Indo-Caribbean women rises and harsh post-9-11 criminal justice and immigration policies tear their families apart, they need an organization that will build community power. Created and led by Indo-Caribbean women, groundbreaking Jahajee Sisters uses an arts-based advocacy model to engage community members and develop their leadership skills. They build bridges with other South Asian and people of color organizations to tackle reproductive justice, domestic violence, and coalition work.

  • Justice Committee $10,000
    Police abuse persists, especially in low-income, disenfranchised communities. More than 140 cases of police abuse occurred in New York City between Amadou Diallo's death in 1999 and Sean Bell's in 2006. Justice Committee organizes to create systems of accountability and direct community supervision of the policing in their neighborhoods. Their programs include Cop Watch, where residents observe police in action, and Know Your Rights workshops, where participants learn how to personally interact with the police..

  • La Union $15,000
    Low-income Mexican immigrants residents of Sunset Park, Brooklyn struggle against inhumane immigration laws and lack of basic protections. They are vulnerable to exploitation and often shut out of civic life, including participation in the public school system. For immigrant parents to be fully engaged in the education of their children, adequate translations services must be available, yet hundreds of schools in NYC systematically violate the law by not providing proper language access. La Union develops the leadership of over 600 members living in Sunset Park so they can become agents of change, pursuing broad social and economic reforms. This year, they are focusing on improving language access in schools for parents. They are also implementing a youth-lead campaign to improve the quality of the guidance counseling system, which is both severely overwhelmed and fails to provide adequate services to Mexican-American students and other immigrant students at risk.

  • Sistas on the Rise $5,000
    Low-income teen mothers, in addition to dealing with all the emotional, physical, and economic challenges of new motherhood, also struggle to access proper healthcare, continue their education, and protect themselves from astonishing levels of violence. In Hunts Point and Mott Haven, low-income neighborhoods in the South Bronx, more than 25 percent of all expectant mothers (20 percent of whom are teens) receive no or late prenatal care. It is also difficult for teen mothers to stay in school: 7 out of 10 drop out. And young mothers are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence: 66 percent have been sexually abused and 55 percent have been sexually molested.

    Sistas on the Rise organizes low-income mothers of color, ages 13-21. They provide a space for young women to come together, tap into their collective power and creativity, and create change in their community. The organization supports the personal, educational, and emotional development of young mothers, and as a collective they build their capacity as critical and active mothers, leaders, and organizers.

Securing Peace and Justice

  • Bronx News Network $10,000
    The 1.4 million residents of the Bronx do not have a mainstream news outlet based in the borough. New York City media outlets rarely cover Bronx-specific issues: severe unemployment in the borough, public safety, lack of affordable housing, and overcrowded schools. This lack of coverage further silences communities that have been shut out of political process. It fails to hold elected officials accountable to their constituencies.

    The Bronx News Network gives these communities a voice. It provides residents access to local news through its newspapers (including bilingual community newspapers), websites, and blog. Their strong relationships with Bronx community organizations means BxNN can highlight the work of important local grassroots campaigns. Their youth programs train young people from communities misrepresented by mainstream media networks to become rigorous, effective journalists.

Protecting Civil Liberties and Constitutional Rights

  • Families for Freedom $15,000
    In the U.S., two million people are at-risk of deportation; many of them have lived here for years; many of them have families in this country, including native-born children. Their deportation would be emotionally harrowing for them and their loved ones; already it's a source for daily anxiety. In New York City, collaboration between the NYPD and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has resulted in the deportation for people arrested for minor infractions or simply because the police thought they were 'suspicious.' Families for Freedom (FFF) members include current and former detainees as well as family members and individuals at risk of deportation. Through education, community organizing and advocacy, they are working to roll back laws that lead to abrupt, unconstitutional detention and deportation.

  • Kingsbridge Heights Neighborhood Improvement Association $5,000
    Kingsbridge Heights Neighborhood Improvement Association (KHNIA) in the Bronx organizes neighborhood residents to work on issues of affordable and adequate housing and to reduce school overcrowding. KHNIA supports community members to form tenant and block associations that pressure landlords to respond to building maintenance issues. They are also working to save the Kingsbridge Armory and make its space available for public use. KNHIA members take on leadership roles in community affairs by meeting with representatives from City agencies and law enforcement officials to address local traffic and policing problems.

  • Malcolm X Grassroots Movement $5,000
    When the housing bubble burst, African American residents in New York City were hit with record foreclosures. This further destabilized working class black communities already threatened by displacement through the gentrification of their neighborhoods. Additional pressures on the African American community include targeting by the police and sky-high incarceration and arrest rates. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement takes up multiple challenges that African American communities in New York City face. Currently, they are a core group in the Take Back the Land Coalition. They use direct action to stop evictions, settling families in abandoned property and reclaiming foreclosed and abandoned spaces as community spaces. Their ultimate goal is to pressure the city to set a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. They are also a part of a coalition that tracks police misconduct and highlights the disproportionate levels of stop-and-frisks and arrests in the Black community.

  • New Sanctuary Coalition of New York $5,000
    As anti-immigration sentiment heats up across the country, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues its crackdown on undocumented immigrants. ICE regularly raids workplaces, throws immigrants in jail, and deports them. Families with one or more undocumented member are in constant and terrifying danger of being ripped apart.

    In 1980s when thousands of Central American refugees faced deportation, churches and temples formed the Sanctuary Movement to protect refugees and create policy change. The New Sanctuary Coalition of New York builds on this legacy. Today, they bring together clergy and congregations across the city in a multi-faith coalition that provides logistical and spiritual support to families in danger of being separated by deportation. After their successful campaign last year to secure the release of Haitian immigrant and activist Jean Montrevil, the coalition continues to organize faith-based groups to fight for comprehensive immigration reform.