Community Connections for Youth

Community Connections for Youth (CCFY) is a New-York based nonprofit organization, whose mission is to mobilize indigenous faith and neighborhood organizations to develop effective community-based alternative-to-incarceration programs for youth. CCFY believes that increasing local community capacity to work with youth in the justice system is the key to reducing youth crime and delinquency, and improving long-term life outcomes for youth. CUP collaborated with Community Connections for Youth, Inc. to create Pinned Down? Rise Up!, an illustrated foldout poster that explains the PINS process and its consequences, lists community-based alternative solutions, and provides advice on making the right decision for each family. https://cc-fy.org/

Community Food Action at New Settlement Apartments

Community Food Action at New Settlement Apartments launched in 2014. This initiative integrates access to healthy and affordable food into every aspect of community development work – providing resident outreach, nutrition education, and cooking classes; creating new or improved healthy food outlets; and generating food-sector jobs. CUP collaborated with Community Food Action at New Settlement Apartments to create What’s On Your Plate? as a guide to school menu choices and how communities can get involved in the type of food served at public schools. https://newsettlement.org/food/

Community Health Advocates

Community Health Advocates (CHA), a program of the Community Service Society, provides free and confidential individual counseling and educational community presentations to individuals, families, advocates and providers about health insurance in New York State. CHA network of community-based organizations and small business serving groups help New Yorkers access the health care they need, understand their health insurance options, and how the healthcare system works. CHA helps all New Yorkers: the privately insured, publicly insured, and uninsured. To help the thousands of people in NY State who still don’t have health insurance make their way through this complex process, CUP worked with CHA to create Figuring Out Health Insurance. This issue of Making Policy Public illustrates how health insurance works, basic rights under the ACA, and how to get insurance—including reduced price programs. http://www.communityhealthadvocates.org/

Community Voices Heard

Community Voices Heard (CVH) is a membership-based community group that works to engage low-income families in organizing campaigns to influence policy that affects their families and their communities. CVH was started in 1994 by women on public assistance who wanted to fight to have their voices included in the national debate on welfare reform. CVH places priority on leadership development, policy education, direct action, participatory research and community outreach to build the tools necessary to engage community members and win on policy issues. CVH is currently working with CUP on the Public Housing Participation MPP.

Damascus Citizens for Sustainability

In February 2008, concerned residents formed Damascus Citizens for Sustainability (DCS) to protect this invaluable water resource which has been targeted by the gas extraction industry. The Delaware River Watershed provides drinking water for some 20 million people from four states: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.  Drilling into the shale rock that lies below this watershed to extract the natural gas would introduce a long list of toxic chemicals into the environment, thus putting drinking water at risk. DCS has helped to lead the charge to stop the drilling through public education, legal action and grass-roots organizing. DCS is currently working with CUP to produce the Fracking in the Delaware River Watershed MPP.

Damayan Migrant Workers Association

DAMAYAN is a 10-year old grassroots, membership-based organization of low-income Filipino im/migrant workers, primarily women domestic workers. DAMAYAN organizes Filipino workers to defend their rights and to understand and challenge the root causes of forced migration and poverty. Through its programs and campaigns, DAMAYAN has effectively addressed exploitation, health problems and gender violence against Filipino women domestic workers. It uses solid organizing to combine political analysis and education with services, basebuilding, leadership development, and advocacy. It is a democratic organization with a wide base of over 800 members and an elected Board of Directors of all women domestic workers. DAMAYAN worked with CUP on Work Forced, a video about the labor trafficking of Filipino domestic workers.

Families For Freedom

Families For Freedom is a New York-based multi-ethnic defense network by and for immigrants facing deportation. It is a source of education and action for directly affected families, and an organizing support center for directly affected communities.  FFF works for change through community mobilization, legal advocacy, media work, and congressional outreach. FFF collaborated with CUP on the MPP Immigrants Beware!

Fifth Avenue Committee, Inc. (FAC)

Fifth Avenue Committee, Inc. (FAC) is a not-for-profit, community-based organization in lower Park Slope and South Brooklyn. FAC’s mission is to advance social and economic justice in South Brooklyn. They develop and manage affordable housing and community facilities, create economic opportunities, organize residents and workers, offer student-centered adult education and combat displacement caused by gentrification. FAC contributed to the development of What is Affordable Housing?

Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project

Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project (FLANBWAYAN) founded in 2005 is a youth membership based organization serving newcomer and young adult Haitian immigrant students in New York City who are English Language Learners (ELLs) between the ages of 14 to 21. Flanbwayan provides a safety net for Haitian youth who may possibly fall through the cracks of an overwhelming high school placement process as they enter the New York area, providing much needed services, including individual education assessments and appropriate school placements. To help immigrant students and their families in NYC find the right school, CUP worked with Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project to create Your School, Your Choice!, a multilingual, step-by-by guide explaining the enrollment process. This guide helps students and their families understand their rights, their different school options, and how to enroll in the high school of their choice. http://flanbwayan.org/

Freedom To Thrive

Freedom To Thrive works to create a world where safety means investment in people & planet and to end the punishment-based criminal and immigration systems. We are a powerful Black and brown network, centering youth, nonbinary, and femme leadership through our Freedom Cities, Freedom Campus, and ongoing prison industry divestment work. We target the root causes of criminalization and mass incarceration and confronting these oppressive systems using strategic campaigning, leadership development, and popular education.

Freedom to Thrive was founded in 1998 by visionary organizations from the U.S. and Mexico to support women of color led grassroots campaigning against transnational corporations. Ten years ago, our members cited the threats of mass incarceration and immigration detention as the most harmful systems impacting their lives. We have spent the past decade building campaigns led by Black and brown communities to confront criminalization.

GOLES

GOLES is a neighborhood housing and preservation organization that has served the Lower East Side of Manhattan since 1977. Through our direct services, we serve over 2,000 families each year, and thousands more through our organizing and training and education work. We work locally, city-wide, and nationally with our allies to build solidarity and collective power to fight against the issues that oppress us and to create the world we want to see. GOLES has collaborated on Public Housing Television (PHTV) and the Affordable Housing Toolkit.

Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center

is the premier nonprofit industrial developer in New York City. Since its inception in 1992, GMDC has rehabilitated seven manufacturing buildings in Brooklyn for occupancy by small manufacturing enterprises, artisans and artists. GMDC currently owns and manages five of these properties, the newest among them being the recently completed redevelopment project at 1102 Atlantic Avenue. GMDC creates and sustains viable manufacturing sectors in urban neighborhoods through planning, developing, and managing real estate and offering other related services.

Housing Court Answers

Housing Court Answers has been advocating for people without lawyers in NYC’s Housing Courts for more than 30 years. They staff information tables, run a hotline and train advocates who assist low income people facing eviction and homelessness. Housing Court Answers has led the fight for the use of plain language in the courts, better treatment of “pro se” litigants (those without lawyers), and an end to tenant “blacklisting”. And they continue to advocate, as they have since their founding, for a right to counsel for low income tenants in eviction cases. CUP has collaborated with Housing Court Answers many times and has created Housing Court Help, Keep Your Family’s Home, Mantenga el hogar de su Familia, and Get Support in Housing Court!  http://housingcourtanswers.org/

Immigrant Defense Project

IDP was founded 15 years ago to respond to the devastating 1996 immigration laws that have placed millions of immigrants at risk of detention and deportation for virtually any interaction with the criminal justice system. Since then, the deportation apparatus has expanded greatly. A key tool in the mass deportation system is the collaboration between police and jails with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to identify people for deportation. IDP works to end this collaboration and transform unjust deportation policies. They also educate immigrant communities, criminal defenders, and others on how to protect and expand immigrant rights. IDP is working with CUP on a website about how immigrants that have been arrested can protect themselves from ICE.

Justice Committee

The Justice Committee (JC) is a grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement against police violence and systemic racism in New York City and empowering low-income Latino/as and other people of color to address these issues. Recognizing that true power can only be exercised by unified communities we prioritize developing the leadership of both youth and elders and strive to make our organizing a multi-generational effort. By building solidarity with other anti-racist, immigrant and people of color-led organizations, we seek to contribute to a broad-based movement for social justice. CUP collaborated with the Justice Committee to create We’re Watching: A guide to recording the police and ICE, a booklet that explains your rights and best practices for documenting law enforcement. https://www.justicecommittee.org/