GRANTS 520 EIGHTH AVENUE, SUITE 1800 | NEW YORK, NY 10018-6656 WWW.NORTHSTARFUND.ORG | @NORTHSTARFUND
MOVEMENT LEADERSHIP GRANTS
SPRING 2017
African Communities Together (ACT)
For African immigrants, French and Arabic are the languages of business and government, even if they speak other tongues at home. ACT launched the Campaign for Language Access to push city agencies to improve access, hire bilingual and bicultural staff, and open doors to critical resources and services for New York City’s diverse African communities. The campaign won a recent victory to translate municipal ID and voter registration forms into an additional five languages, including Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, Russian, and Urdu. Through its leadership in a coordinated national campaign, ACT also won an extension of Temporary Protected Status for Ebola-affected countries. Through the Movement Leadership Program, ACT will further leverage their success through deepened leadership skills, stronger community organizing efforts, and the cultivation of powerful partnerships. ACT is also a Grassroots Action grantee and was awarded $10,000 to support their critical language justice work. $50,000
URBAN YOUTH COLLABORATIVE
North Star Fund recently awarded the seventh round of Movement Leadership grants. Distributed over two years, these grants are a deeper investment in organizations with a strong record of success in mobilizing their constituencies and building the movement for the long haul. In addition to funding, representatives of grantees’ staff, board, and membership participate in a yearlong peer-learning program to build both their skills and capacity to advance campaign goals and learn from an invaluable community of peers—and future partners—to become more powerful agents of social justice.
CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities
In the last 15 years, city policies, private developers, and vicious landlords have pushed over 20 percent of Asian residents out of Chinatown and eliminated 25,000 affordable homes. $50,000
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Through its Chinatown Tenants Union, CAAAV organizes limited English proficiency Asian immigrants who live in poverty, arming them with information about their rights and the laws. Recently, CAAAV expanded to organize Asian residents living in Queens housing projects. With North Star Fund’s support, CAAAV will develop the skills and relationships it needs to deepen its membership base and their leaders. In addition to learning from other grantees, CAAAV will share its experience and growth in multilingual organizing and political education, particularly with a membership that is targeted by the current administration.
New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE)
New immigrants are often victimized by predatory employment agencies that charge up-front fees but never deliver on promised jobs. NICE, and the Justice for Job Seekers coalition it anchors, won a major legislative victory with a bill to protect workers from fraudulent employment agencies though increased penalties and strict government enforcement. Day laborers and domestic workers led community organizing efforts, positioning NICE as a one-stop shop $50,000
for low-wage immigrant workers. Since it opened a new community job center, NICE has experienced dramatic growth. The Movement Leadership grant will help NICE harness this new growth, hone its organizing model, and make sure its staff and organizers have the tools and resources needed to stay the course and increase protections for our most vulnerable New Yorkers.
Ugnayan Youth for Justice and Social Change
Filipinos are one of the largest Asian Pacific Islander communities in New York City. In a recent survey, Ugnayan found that 60 percent of Filipino youth are bullied or otherwise socially excluded in city schools because of their race, with over half of respondents citing “a complete lack of support for the difficulties they face.” To develop strategies to keep their peers safe and engaged, Ugnayan’s youth leaders have expanded their year-round leadership development program and rallied youth around the Dignity in Schools campaign to end punitive public school policies that disproportionately impact youth of color. Ugnayan’s youth-centered work utilizes peer-counseling to resolve conflict, build trust, and foster community. $50,000
AFRICAN COMMUNITIES TOGETHER
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As a Movement Leadership grantee, Ugnayan members will get the knowledge and skills they need to deepen their work and fight injustice in local neighborhoods through community organizing campaigns and collective action.
Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC)
UYC is a citywide coalition of youth-led groups that are fighting to put lowincome public high school students first. UYC’s leadership pushed the New York City Department of Education to break away from punitive and disciplinary policies that strengthen the school-to-prison pipeline. UYC has anchored the coalition throughout the rapid expansion of its Student Success Center model in which peer advisors help other students navigate college applications and higher education. Through the Movement Leadership grant, UYC will build its leadership and capacity in anchoring a growing coalition to keep fighting for our city’s youth in the current political moment. UYC is also a current Grassroots Action grantee and was awarded $10,000 to support their work to build a “school-to-college” pipeline. $50,000
CAAAV
like dinners, holistic healing, trainings, retreats, and a film festival to engage and recruit new members. BTM’s approach is the first step to organizing Black trans people to understand the issue landscape, define solutions, and tackle homelessness, gentrification, and policing that affect them in profound ways every single day.
CATALYST GRANTS
Bronx Social Center (BSC)
Recently, private real estate developers attempted to again rebrand the South Bronx—a community grappling with decades of disinvestment, high environmental pollution, police abuse, and now rapid gentrification—as the up-and-coming “Piano District” to attract new and wealthier residents to the changing neighborhood. Original residents came together to resist the rebranding and to fight for their right to live in their own community. In recent years, BSC, formerly known as Take Back the Bronx, has been uniting and organizing local residents, youth, artists, and activists. A collective dedicated to youth and community political education, self-defense, and direct action, BSC educates and mobilizes members in the fight against $5,000
EQUALITY FOR FLATBUSH
Through trust and responsive partnerships with grassroots organizations, North Star Fund has its ear to the ground and can respond quickly to breaking issues and urgent community organizing needs across the city. Catalyst grants provide new and emerging groups with the seed funding they need to advance cutting-edge strategies, with a specific focus on both building leadership within the organization and strengthening their numbers and engagement of members. Grantees may receive up to six years of seed funding with annual renewals. In addition to funding, grantees build their capacity through technical assistance workshops and trainings to sustain their growth into maturity.
Black Trans Media (BTM)
When the average life expectancy of a transgender woman of color is 35, and almost 70 percent of all LGBTQ homicide victims are transgender women of color, the work of BTM is a matter of life and death. Support and resources are often only provided $5,000
through traditional social service settings that can be disempowering and even traumatic for transgender people. BTM addresses this gap by creating venues for Black trans people to build a safe, authentic community around their shared experiences. This fledgling but powerful organization uses innovative cultural events
BRONX SOCIAL CENTER
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BLACK TRANS MEDIA
police brutality and gentrification. This year, BSC will begin strategic research and planning for a new antigentrification organizing campaign to combat the onslaught of private development in the South Bronx.
Equality for Flatbush (E4F)
Police harassment and $5,000 displacement from gentrification are at crisis levels in Flatbush, Brooklyn. E4F harnesses the power of collective action and community members to fight back. Founded in response to the interconnected issues of rampant racial profiling and police abuses, greedy landlords, and unscrupulous private developers, E4F brings together multiracial and multilingual residents, street vendors, “dollar van” operators who provide informal transportation services, and allies. This year, E4F will continue to build a comprehensive strategy and sustainable practices to achieve their vision of a safe and thriving Flatbush for all.
Foreclosure Resisters
Born from the Great Recession foreclosure crisis that allowed big banks to steal over 5.5 million homes, Foreclosure Resisters has empowered hundreds of homeowners to fight predatory lending. The organization has won significant victories in city, state, $10,000
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and federal policy arenas, such as homeowner protections in the New York State Consumer Bill of Rights and the New York City Community Restoration Fund. Foreclosure Resisters educates members citywide through Know Your Rights trainings and provides concrete support for members in negotiations with lenders or in court proceedings. Led by homeowners impacted by predatory mortgage lending, Foreclosure Resisters will continue to share skills, tools, and strategies to protect and empower homeowners in the five boroughs and across the nation.
Incarcerated Nation Corporation (INC)
INC educates, organizes, and empowers the people living under the consequences of a broken criminal justice system. For INC’s almost 1,500 incarcerated or previously incarcerated members and their families, access to basic services and resources can make or break their reentry into society. The organization provides housing support, transportation, legal assistance, and even food and clothing—and helps keep families together during incarceration and after release. INC also educates its members and potential members to fight for voting and other rights we are all entitled to. By training its members to share their $5,000
RAPP
experiences, lobby, and speak with legislators, INC is mitigating a complex and unjust system to transform the policy conversation.
Northern Manhattan is Not for Sale
When Mayor de Blasio proposed controversial city housing legislation that would displace thousands of Inwood residents, grassroots organizations came together to ensure truly affordable housing in northern Manhattan. The fledgling coalition won a major victory early on through strategic organizing and advocacy. They convinced City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez to stand behind his constituency and reject a luxury development proposed by Acadia Realty that would have been the first under the Mayor’s new plan. Acadia claimed 50 percent of their units would be affordable, yet rents would have been unattainable for the vast majority of neighborhood families. With the coalition’s leadership and Rodriguez’ example, City Council followed suit and rejected the Acadia proposal. Building on the momentum of this major victory, Northern Manhattan is Not for Sale is building a mass movement to increase community control over land use decisions and win the next rezoning fight. $5,000
NORTHERN MANHATTAN IS NOT FOR SALE
Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP)
QDEP members disproportionately face extreme isolation and violence while incarcerated and face tremendous barriers on the outside. QDEP fights to end these disparities, as well as in housing, employment, healthcare, and unjust law enforcement practices that drive and perpetuate homophobia, transphobia, racism, and Islamophobia. Committed to the leadership and personal and professional growth of LGBTQ, intersex, and gender nonconforming people and HIV+ detainees and immigrants—including undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers—QDEP’s strategies include social services, crisis intervention, community organizing, training, and advocacy. QDEP’s recent #WomenFightICE campaign galvanizes community members who—or whose families—are at high risk of incarceration, including LGBTQ and indigenous people, and Black women. $5,000
incarcerated by New York State for 33 years, RAPP organizes to get elderly and infirm prisoners out of prison, to transform the system, and to change the narrative about who deserves basic rights and dignity. RAPP is currently expanding its reach to more incarcerated people and their families and loved ones to advance the Safe and Fair Evaluations (SAFE) Parole Act for a transparent and fair parole process and to help people successfully reintegrate. In addition to putting the pressure on Governor Andrew Cuomo to pass the law, RAPP is taking the regional fight to the national policy arena as part of the Aging Reentry Task Force and the Formerly Incarcerated and Families People’s Movement.
QDEP
Voces Ciudadanas
Sunset Park is plagued by school overcrowding. Siblings are forced to attend different schools, others sit on waiting lists for over eight months to be placed in neighborhood school, students requiring legally protected special education cannot access it, and teacher-to-student ratios are commonly 1:35. A concerned group of politically active residents hit the streets to survey neighborhood families—and from that survey project, Voces Ciudadanas evolved into a powerful grassroots campaign. Members are demanding thousands of new seats in local schools and parents are taking leadership in critical school decisions for their children, including curricula, administration, services and resources. $5,000
Release Aging People in Prison Campaign (RAPP)
Nearly 20 percent of New York State’s incarcerated population is 50 and older, and many are left to languish behind bars in the face of public apathy and an unjust parole system. Led by Mujahid Farid, who was $5,000
FORECLOSURE RESISTERS
VOCES CIUDADANAS
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By strengthening the leadership of low-income immigrant and migrant parents, engaging local politicians, staging direct actions to pressure the New York City School Construction Authority, and unifying a strategic coalition of organizations and stakeholders to advance social justice on interrelated issues, such as gentrification and education justice, Voces is ensuring that Sunset Park parents are setting the agenda in the conversation on school overcrowding.
GRASSROOTS ACTION GRANTS
Yaffed
Hasidic boys under age thirteen receive an average of only six hours per week of secular education consisting of only English and arithmetic, after which many yeshivas provide no general education at all. Yaffed was founded by Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox yeshiva alumni to bring together youth and families directly impacted by inadequate schooling to raise awareness about the importance of general studies education and hold the city and state accountable for enforcing state education law. Yaffed combines advocacy, legal action, and innovative activism like billboard campaigns to challenge the city’s failure to enforce state law mandating “substantially equivalent” education in private schools so that young Hasidic boys can receive a comprehensive education about the world outside their community. $5,000
NEIGHBORS TOGETHER
At North Star Fund, we believe grantmaking itself can and should reflect the values of the movement it seeks to fuel—like shifting the power dynamics of philanthropy and trusting in the organizations that are addressing the root causes of injustice to devise the solutions. This year, the Grassroots Action grant will enable grantees to dedicate even more time and energy to focus on the hard work at hand: ensuring that our city is just and fair for all communities across the five boroughs.
Adhikaar for Human Rights and Social Justice $10,000
Adhikaar, a womenled Nepali-speaking
organization, recently won a major victory in improving work, health, and safety conditions for thousands of New York nail salon workers. Adhikaar has been a powerful voice in the fight for workers’ rights, health access, immigrant rights, and language justice. In addition to the passage of groundbreaking nail salon ventilation requirements, Adhikaar recovered YAFFED
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$100,000 in stolen wages; achieved
Temporary Protected Status for Nepali people after the devastating 2015 earthquake; and registered over 300 immigrants to vote in the U.S. for the first time ever. Through its coalition work, Adhikaar brings Nepali voices to the larger social justice community at this crucial political moment.
AF3IRM NYC
Disappearances, violence, vulnerability to commercial sex exploitation, and trafficking are realities experienced disproportionately by women of color around the world. AF3IRM NYC $5,000
ADHIKAAR
amplifies the voices and experiences of transnational women of color in public discourse—one of their most powerful creative advocacy campaigns include #GoneButNotForgotten, a collaborative art exhibit that commemorates missing, murdered, and trafficked women. This year, AF3IRM NYC will host its sixth annual Summer School of Women’s Activism, an alternative political education space that centers women’s experiences, herstories, and activism to end sexism and patriarchy.
Arab American Association of New York (AAANY)
The current political climate has fueled pervasive hostility and hatred of Muslims and Arab Americans at levels unprecedented since 9/11. On the streets of New York, women of all generations are being attacked for wearing a hijab during the morning rush hour. AAANY is channeling uncertainty and fear in the community to fight back against discriminatory policing and immigration policies, surveillance, and state violence. Through practical and powerful educational programs, media advocacy, and strong coalitions, AAANY strengthens community leaders to confront Islamophobia head-on. As part of the Communities $15,000
BLACK WOMEN’S BLUEPRINT
United for Police Reform coalition, AAANY’s 5,000 members are joining communities across the city to pass the Right to Know Act for police accountability and transparency through community organizing, direct action, advocacy, and litigation.
Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)
Black immigrants face persistent NYPD harassment, which contributes to the disproportionate number of Black immigrants placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at five times the rate of other undocumented immigrants. BAJI is an invaluable resource for African, AfroLatina/o, Afro-Caribbean, and African American communities in New York. BAJI is a powerful organizing hub in the fight for investment in communities—rather than adding more police officers. BAJI anchors the Black Immigrant Network, a national kinship with nearly 40 Black-led organizations that are connecting, training, and building towards policy and cultural change at the intersection of migrant rights and racial justice. $10,000
Black Women’s Blueprint (BWB) $10,000
An alarming 60 percent of Black women in New
York City have reported being raped at least once in their lives in a BWB survey. Grappling with trauma, many survivors are commonly revictimized at workplaces and schools that lack the safeguards and resources needed to heal. Survivors are often fired, forced to quit working, receive academic discipline, or pushed out of school. Reality is even tougher for LGBTQ students. BWB will launch a new campaign for Black survivors of rape and other sexual assault targeting at-will employment in New York State and to hold the City University of New York accountable to new federal Violence Against Women Act protections. BWB will also design and implement culturally-specific interventions to prevent sexual violence in the community before it happens.
BronxPOWER
The Bronx has faced 30 years of disinvestment, leading to record-high unemployment, increased high school dropout rates, and staggering poverty. Despite a high density of nonprofit organizations that serve the community, a lack of partnerships between them is a barrier to effective community organizing. BronxPOWER, formerly Women Organizing Neighborhoods, is building a network of organizers through intensive trainings that offer political education and address $10,000
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CIS-NYC
personal experiences of oppression of working-class immigrants and women leaders. In addition to growing deeper relationships across the community, BronxPOWER is focused on transforming the public education system by pushing for more investment in public schools and to end the school-to-prison pipeline.
Cabrini Immigrant Services of NYC (CIS-NYC)
CIS-NYC has a track record of amplifying the voices of those living the consequences of anti-immigrant $10,000
policies and xenophobia. Through a faith-based approach, CIS-NYC’s Justice for Immigrants organizing project engages thousands of New Yorkers to fight for social justice through essential social services, political education, and leadership development for clients and members. This year, CIS-NYC will grow its capacity to build and sustain an expanding membership and mobilize members around immigrants’ rights despite current legislative blocks on comprehensive immigration reform. CIS-NYC will focus on strategic engagement of youth and seniors
BETTY MILLARD GRANTEE
DRUM
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CSWA
to build a more diverse, multigenerational membership.
Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association (CSWA)
Economic hardship is a daily reality for thousands of Chinese immigrant workers who face rampant wage theft violations and daylong mandatory shifts without overtime pay. By uniting workers across trades, CSWA is a force to reckon with and a critical resource for low-income immigrant New Yorkers. CSWA has spearheaded the fight for wage theft enforcement $5,000
Betty Millard was a lifelong organizer for economic justice and the empowerment of women who generously made a bequest to North Star Fund. Once a year, North Star Fund awards a grant in her honor. The 2016 Betty Millard Memorial Grantee is DRUM, which recently launched a leadership development program led by and for young women and a public education campaign on street harassment.
CFA
policies; advocates for the tipped state minimum wage; organizes home attendants to win back stolen overtime pay for regular 24-hour shifts; and is pushing for a community-led rezoning model to protect the Chinatown and Lower East Side neighborhoods from private developers and impending displacement.
Community Food Advocates (CFA)
Hungry kids can’t learn. Despite 75 percent of New York City’s 1.1 million schoolaged students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, thousands of children skip school-provided lunches to avoid the stigma of being a “free lunch kid.” CFA and its partners recently launched Lunch 4 Learning (L4L) to drive a simple solution home: provide lunch to everyone. Despite a major victory by CFA and L4L that won free lunch for all middle school students, Mayor Bill de Blasio has yet to deliver on his campaign promise to instate free lunch for all public school students. With a broad coalition of over 200 organizations and 60 elected officials, CFA plans to engage, train, and mobilize 400 more youth and parents through L4L direct actions, media, and political advocacy until food equity is a reality in New York City. $10,000
Damayan Migrant Workers Association
Damayan is on the front lines to combat labor abuses and trafficking. Damayan’s members lead political campaigns to reform the systems that create and perpetuate such practices, including ending immunity for diplomats who traffic workers, protecting exploited workers through special visas, and more. On the ground, Damayan provides trafficking survivors with the critical services they need to change their lives, like emergency housing, repatriation, transportation, and documentation support. This year, Damayan will grow its capacity to protect even more workers from exploitation and abuse, and raise public awareness through grassroots and media advocacy, collaboration with key stakeholders, and ensuring that survivors of trafficking get access to the services and resources they need. $15,000
DRUM — South Asian Organizing Center
Despite being one of the fastest growing immigrant groups locally and nationally, the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean (SAIC) population— much of which is undocumented—is largely invisible in the conversation $20,000
DAMAYAN
on racial justice and educational equity. Targeted by both local police and immigration enforcement and struggling under unjust economic, education, and political systems, organizing the SAIC community is of utmost importance in our current political climate. DRUM offers genuine leadership development for nearly 3,000 youth and low-wage immigrant workers in advancing solutions on their terms. With North Star Fund’s support, DRUM will build the organization’s capacity and reach, particularly in youth organizing to end the school-to-prison pipeline; ending discriminatory policing of Muslim and other communities of color; and deepening its recent expansion into the five boroughs.
Faith in New York (FINY)
FINY is a federation of over 70 interfaith, multiracial congregations that prioritizes the leadership of its members from 80,000 families in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx who are living in the crosshairs of injustice. FINY believes that economic injustice can be mitigated when the people affected by poor policy decisions have a voice, tools, and power to provide new alternatives. Trained in the skills needed to win policy solutions, FINY is taking the $10,000
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FAITH IN NEW YORK
fight to Albany to end discriminatory hiring practices in New York State regarding criminal record information and to create dialogue on the impact of the mass incarceration and detention of women and girls.
Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE)
The rapid gentrification of downtown Brooklyn is displacing and categorically excluding long-time and low-income residents. Led largely by women of color, FUREE organizes low-income renters, especially NYCHA tenants in the Wycoff Gardens and Gowanus Houses, to ensure that the current wave of development includes rather than displaces them. FUREE is building on the momentum of a recent coalition victory in Albany that won $100 million in capital improvement funds to address the backlog of critical repairs in NYCHA housing. $10,000
FIERCE
Despite a progressive city administration and recent gender-affirming policy victories, LGBTQ youth of color still live daily under the thumb of oppression. So-called quality of life policing criminalizes them, schools lack basic resources like textbooks or faculty, and poverty and homelessness $10,000
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FUREE
are compounded by gentrification or familial rejection and abuse. FIERCE’s youth membership is shaping the vision for a different reality. From their new home in the Bronx, FIERCE and its coalition partners will continue to fight to end “broken windows” policing—including divestment of taxpayer dollars from unjust policing—gentrification, and private development of their members’ neighborhoods.
Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project
For Haitian immigrants enrolling in New York City public schools, the Department of Education Family Welcome Center is anything but welcoming. Students are placed in schools with no programs for English learners, nor are they given appropriate school choice options or other vital information. Additionally, parents are often denied access to the interpretation and translation they need to make informed decisions. Flanbwayan organizes Haitian youth and their families to improve policies and provide immigrants with equitable access to education. With the support of the grant, Flanbwayan will focus on making high school enrollment accessible and preventing the current move to eliminate a critical program—Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE)—that teaches $10,000
reading and writing literacy for students who need intensive support to catch up to their peers.
Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC)
Brooklyn Housing Court—described by tenants as a tool for unscrupulous landlords to evict residents en masse— lacks adequate translation services, offers poor physical accessibility, and is lax about enforcing housing repair orders. The Flatbush Tenant Coalition, housed at FDC, unites over 15,000 tenants in the fight to hold landlords accountable and to make sure that Brooklyn Housing Court is a fully accessible, decent, and just place for Brooklyn’s most vulnerable tenants. In a recent victory, tenant-led organizing meetings, public forums, actions, and media outreach successfully pressured local state representatives to take a stand against rent laws that incentivize landlords to harass and displace longtime residents. $10,000
Flushing Workers Center
Flushing, Queens is home to thousands of immigrant workers in industries rife with unsafe and dangerous conditions, long hours without overtime, and wage theft. Flushing Workers Center is $10,000
organizing nail salon workers, restaurant workers, and car service drivers to challenge rampant wage and hour violations, fight for a living wage, recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen wages, and end the worker misclassification as independent contractors. The Center is currently mobilizing its base to pressure lawmakers in Albany to pass the Securing Wages Earned Against Theft Theft (SWEAT) bill to ensure that New Yorkers can recover wages stolen by their employers.
FPA Foundation
When the city Administration for Children’s Services intervenes, Black children are more likely to be taken away from their families. Once removed, they remain in foster care longer, are moved more often, receive fewer services, and are less likely to be returned home or adopted than white children. Led by youth, parents, and foster parents, FPA exposes the failure of the system through powerful media advocacy and public awareness campaigns that tell the stories of families of color trapped in an unjust system. FPA conducts outreach and education and mobilizes impacted communities in direct action and advocacy, including tribunals on human rights abuses with the U.S. Human Rights Network. $10,000
INDO-CARIBBEAN ALLIANCE
Indo-Caribbean Alliance
For the young $5,000 people of Southeast Queens’ vibrant Indo-Caribbean community, barriers to social and civic engagement include low high school graduation rates and low voter registration among eligible community members. In addition to providing critical services like tutoring and school assistance, the Indo-Caribbean Alliance has developed a platform for the community to get involved in the decisions that will impact them most. Indo-Caribbean Alliance youth recently conducted the largest voter education drive in Queens history. Their canvassing, door-knocking, and voter registration created new relationships with 1,000 Richmond Hill residents, while building the advocacy skills of neighborhood youth and strengthening the civic engagement of the Indo-Caribbean community.
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ)
For 25 years, JFREJ has been building Jewish political consciousness and commitment to fight alongside communities of color. More recently, JFREJ has become a home for organizing against police brutality and violence, both as a platform for Black or mixed-race Jews and for white Jews who stand in solidarity with them. JFREJ will advance several major campaigns this year: fighting for the Right to Know Act along with Communities United for Police Reform and other partners to end discriminatory policing practices against Black, Arab, Latino, Muslim, and other New Yorkers of color; and to advance the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and other state care policies by building awareness among seniors, people with disabilities, care workers, and the families who employ them. $10,000
Justice Committee (JC)
After many trips to the state capitol, media events, petitions, direct actions, and more, JC recently won an executive order for an independent special prosecutor to handle certain police killings. By mobilizing its base of families and communities that have lost loved ones to the police, such as Ramarley Graham’s mother and $15,000
FLUSHING WORKERS CENTER
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LA COLMENA
father, Constance Malcolm and Frank Graham, JC places those directly impacted by police violence at the fore of the battle. JC and Ramarley’s family are still fighting for justice for the Black teen shot and killed at home by NYPD officers. Currently, JC is demanding that Mayor de Blasio fire all NYPD officers responsible for Ramarley’s death. Through Cop Watch street teams, workshops, advocacy, and direct action, JC’s members are putting an end to police abuse and violence.
La Colmena
Thousands of day laborers who live and work in New York City are vulnerable to rampant wage theft, workplace abuse and exploitation, and alarming rates of sometimes fatal workplace accidents. La Colmena’s worker leaders are changing conditions and building the political power of Staten Island workers who are demanding basic rights and fighting abuse from unscrupulous employers. Coming off the heels of a historic victory—a $500,000 investment in day laborer centers by City Council—La Colmena and its partners recently launched the Journaler@ mobile application to prevent wage theft and other violations of workers rights. $10,000
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Laundry Workers Center (LWC)
Wage theft and unsafe working conditions are endemic. In New York City alone, over 2 million workers have their wages stolen each year, including through overtime violations. LWC equips workers with the tools to advocate, train, and empower themselves to lead winning organizing campaigns. LWC won a major victory against B&H Photo and Video to transform abusive labor practices. Now, LWC and B&H employees are working tirelessly to win their first union contract and build solidarity between the Latina/o and Jewish communities. In partnership with the Urban Justice Center, LWC will launch the Laundromat Participatory Research Project in 2017 to document the working conditions of the city’s many coin laundromats and empower laundry workers to organize and stand up for their right to safe, sustainable jobs. $10,000
Mekong NYC
While Asians are the fastest growing poor since the Great Recession, racial misconceptions have contributed to a lack of critical resources and services in poor Asian communities. For Southeast Asians who escaped genocide, war, and extreme violence in the 1980s and $10,000
JUSTICE COMMITTEE
were resettled by the U.S. government in the Bronx, this has contributed to persistent rates of poverty and low educational attainment. Mekong combines grassroots organizing with direct services to serve, engage, and mobilize Southeast Asians to improve health access, economic survival, and workers rights. This year, Mekong will open a Southeast Asian health clinic in partnership with Bronx Lebanon Hospital and Groundswell Project and develop effective organizing strategies to support both workers and nail salon owners in navigating new state regulations to protect workers rights.
Metropolitan Council / MCREF (Met Council)
For over half a century, Met Council has been building a mass movement to preserve rent regulation and affordable housing. Through tenant organizing, a hotline, walk-in clinic, and media advocacy, Met Council is combatting weakened rent laws and the mass displacement of New York City residents. The organization anchors the Northern Manhattan is Not for Sale Coalition, and, in partnership with other community organizations, Met Council is building an even broader base of Manhattan residents to ensure that neighborhoods remain affordable for current and future residents. $15,000
LAUNDRY WORKERS CENTER
Milk Not Jails
During the prison construction boom of the 1980s and 1990s, many economically depressed rural towns in upstate New York looked to prisons to provide jobs and jumpstart their local economies. Milk Not Jails unites farmers, current and formerly incarcerated people, and their families through a shared interest in a viable economic alternative to mass incarceration. Milk Not Jails members build important leadership skills through its worker-owned farm-to-shelf dairy marketing and distribution business and educational and policy campaigns. Milk Not Jails is fighting for the SAFE Parole Act to reform a broken parole system and provide thousands of incarcerated people a real chance to come home. $10,000
Movement for Justice in el Barrio / Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio (Movimiento)
Movimiento has been organizing tenants in East Harlem where residents, particularly low-income women and families of color, are living under constant threat of displacement through gentrification, harassment, overcharging, and other illegal $10,000
practices by landlords. Movimento builds and develops the leadership skills of thousands of members to create systemic change in housing code enforcement. They are currently advancing a 10-point antigentrification plan, including the need to fight against city policies like rezoning that benefit private developers and corporate landlords.
Neighbors Helping Neighbors (NHN)
Sunset Park is a historically working class and immigrant community facing unprecedented socioeconomic pressures and displacement, forcing hundreds of longtime low-income residents out of their community. The tenant activists of Neighbors Helping Neighbors helped hundreds of families remain in their homes through a campaign that preserved the federal Section 8 status of 40 privately owned buildings. Neighbors Helping Neighbors, along with a coalition of other housing advocates and rentstabilized tenants, recently won a citywide victory resulting in the city’s first rent-freeze in 46 years. $5,000
Neighbors Together
Neighbors Together believes in comprehensive community services as a direct strategy to end hunger and poverty in $5,000
MILK NOT JAILS
central Brooklyn’s most disenfranchised neighborhoods where private developers and pro-gentrification policies threaten affordable housing and employment. Neighbors Together confronts interlocking economic issues like housing, homelessness, and food access head on by amplifying the voices of directly affected people. This year, Neighbors Together will deepen the leadership of low-income women in statewide advocacy, fight for new city regulations of private “three-quarter houses” that often exploit low-income residents rather than providing the resources they claim to provide, and inspire and engage more residents in collective action. Neighbors Together will continue to improve the quality of life of its communities through a comprehensive approach to community organizing.
New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (NY CAIC)
More than 4,000 people incarcerated in New York State are held in solitary confinement in small concrete cells for months or years. For many of these individuals, these conditions lead to severe mental health issues and even suicide. NY CAIC is advocating for the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term $5,000
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PICTURE THE HOMELESS
(HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, which would ban the use of solitary confinement beyond fifteen days. While NY CAIC hopes to someday eliminate the inhumane practice of solitary confinement entirely, they are currently focused on ending the practice for young people, the elderly, people with disabilities, pregnant and nursing women, and LGBTQ individuals.
NYC Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI)
NYCCLI believes community land trusts (CLTs)—organizations that ensure community control of development— are the solution to the housing crisis for extremely low-income New Yorkers. NYCCLI’s East Harlem/El Barrio Community Land Trust has made tremendous progress; CLTs were at the fore of a rigorous communityled planning process and are now a major component of the East Harlem Community Plan. This year, NYCCLI will continue to fight for economic policies that create permanently affordable housing through tax reform and reporting requirements for vacant property owners; education and organizing; and championing legislative change through Housing Not Warehousing, a campaign led by fellow North Star Fund grantee Picture the Homeless. $10,000
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NY CAIC
The Parole Preparation Project
Approximately 3,000 people serving life sentences in New York State are already eligible to return home through parole, but the Board of Parole, known nationally for exceptionally low release rates, repeatedly denies them release. The volunteer-run Parole Preparation Project provides eligible applicants with the tools they need to present and defend their parole cases. Of 34 participants who have been before the Parole Board, nearly half were granted parole, compared to an overall rate of 15 to 25 percent. The organization’s success is in part due to their advisors, which include several formerly incarcerated individuals who are home on parole with the support of the organization. $5,000
Picture the Homeless (PTH)
Wh i l e h o u s i n g s t a t u s is protected from “bias-based profiling” by the historic Community Safety Act, Mayor de Blasio recently launched an aggressive campaign allowing NYPD officers to force homeless people off streets, sidewalks, and out of public spaces. These escalating attacks come at a time when the number of homeless New Yorkers is on a drastic uptick. Founded by and led by homeless
$20,000
people, PTH launched a legal action charging the NYPD with violating city law by targeting people based on their housing status. In addition to strategic fights against police harassment and illegal seizure of property, PTH is working on citywide campaigns and advocacy to create community land trusts, a step towards creating permanently affordable housing.
Riders Alliance
Riders Alliance sees only one solution to the transportation crisis affecting over 9 million New Yorkers daily—to build grassroots power across racial, economic and neighborhood lines to hold decision-makers and gatekeepers accountable, engage other transit riders, and guarantee that riders have a powerful voice. Riders Alliance has already made tremendous strides on the state level: the new state budget includes $2.9 billion and an additional estimated $300 million over the next four years to improve transit infrastructure and service. This victory was a result of Riders Alliance strategic media advocacy to hold Governor Cuomo accountable for equitable public transit. Riders Alliance will further develop members’ leadership to reach more isolated neighborhoods and launch a citywide campaign to provide affordable Metrocards to low-income New Yorkers. $10,000
RIDERS ALLIANCE
Sapna NYC
For new South Asian immigrants, particularly mothers, linguistic barriers, exclusion from social services, discrimination, and other forms of marginalization are huge barriers to workforce participation and their children’s educational success. Sapna NYC builds the everyday skills of an annual cohort of women— who also earn a living wage during the process—in public speaking and interpersonal communication. Women gain the confidence and leadership skills to advocate and engage their communities on critical issues including Islamaphobia, bullying in schools, street violence, and wage theft. Parent-members are currently focused on demanding culturally competent services and other forms of support in the public school system for immigrant parents. $10,000
generation of activists. Through SSLC, middle school and high school youth are equipped with the tools and support they need to organize their communities and demand restorative justice practices as an alternative to punitive school discipline policies. SSLC youth also lead trainings on race and gender for school faculty and recently embarked on creating a new model for positive disciplinary models in charter schools all over the city, beginning with Girls Prep Lower East Side Middle School.
Street Vendor Project (SVP)
Street vendors are essential to the city’s fabric, making good food accessible and affordable to millions of New Yorkers daily. For street vendors, selling food and products is a means of survival and economic stability for them and $5,000
S.O.U.L. SISTERS LEADERSHIP COLLECTIVE
their families. Despite the economic viability and benefit of street vendors, an antiquated law caps the number of available food permits in New York City. Thousands of street vendors are in a trap, waiting years for a permit and operating without one, subjecting immigrants, veterans, and women of color to constant NYPD abuse, harassment, and fines. SVP is a resource for vendors to learn about their legal rights and responsibilities and to access business training and loans. SVP won a major victory reducing street vending fines. And, through their Lift the Caps campaign, SVP plans to increase the number of permits, licenses, and vending spaces for a just, fair, and sustainable New York City for all street vendors.
S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective (SSLC)
Young women of color face disproportionate rates of expulsion from school, gender-based violence, and skyrocketing rates of incarceration. SSLC emerged from the need to build the leadership of young women of color, and its signature peer education model is cultivating a new $5,000
STREET VENDOR PROJECT
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SRLP
Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP)
A lack of access to housing, healthcare, public benefits, and employment; hostile immigration policies; targeting by law enforcement; and a lack of gender-affirming identification are several profound barriers faced by to transgender and gender nonconforming people. In addition to community organizing, coalition partnerships, and advocacy on the local and state level, SRLP offers quality free legal services that are respectful and affirming of its clients and members. After 12 years of organizing and advocacy, SRLP recently won increased Medicaid coverage for transgender people; however, youth are excluded from coverage. SRLP will continue to fight for trans and youth health care access, justice and fairness, and to help lowincome trans New Yorkers improve their quality of life. $10,000
Tenants and Neighbors (T&N)
Few New Yorkers know that loopholes in state rent laws are responsible for 47 percent of the total rent increases that are displacing vulnerable residents across the city. T&N is fighting back through a strategic approach that builds the power and strength of the housing justice movement. Through $10,000
16
TENANTS AND NEIGHBORS
grassroots base-building, policy and legislative campaigns, leadership development, and the Alliance for Tenant Power coalition, T&N will continue its work to eliminate the legal loopholes that create incentives for landlords to displace tenants.
Teachers Unite
For too long, New York City schools have relied on suspension, expulsion, arrests, and other police-like tactics at alarming rates. Over time, these punitive practices push students out of school and lead to a lifetime of exclusion from educational access. Teachers Unite organizes educators to work in solidarity alongside youth and parents through the Dignity in Schools campaign. The campaign is advocating for restorative justice programs as an alternative to zero-tolerance policing and policies in schools. Teachers Unite is currently working to implement the campaign’s recent victory that secured $2.6 million for pilot restorative justice projects. $10,000
Worker’s Justice Project (WJP)
Because of shifting employers and schedules, many day laborers cannot access the critical protections of collective bargaining agreements and state policies that provide a safeguard against unsafe and abusive work conditions. WJP empowers over 150 $10,000
TEACHERS UNITE
members and their families to lead the fight for dignity and respect in the workplace. WJP builds a multiracial movement for worker justice and immigrants’ rights by strengthening its organizational structure, staffing, and strategy; doubling its membership base; conducting Know Your Rights trainings; and developing the campaign leadership of its members. WJP will prioritize the launch of a Brooklyn day laborer center for immigrant women, house cleaners, and construction workers to access work, learn about their rights, and build a strong community that will hold employers accountable for fair wages and health and safety conditions.
YA-YA Network
Black and Latina/o youth account for 70 percent of all New York City public students and represent over 90 percent of all suspensions and arrests—including recently of a 10-year-old Black student. Punitive disciplinary policies like suspensions, expulsions, and arrests disproportionately impact students of color and set students up to fail, pushing them into the schoolto-prison pipeline. YA-YA Network’s youth organizers are to building collective power and agency through peer-education workshops on topics like institutional racism and police profiling by race, gender, and sexuality. YA-YA Network $5,000
youth are actively engaged in identifying the root cause of the social injustices that affect them, and learn the organizing and advocacy tools they need to push for solutions to improve their lives, their families’ lives, and their communities.
INNOVATIVE ACTIVISM
Young Women of Color HIV/ AIDS Coalition (YWCHAC)
With women of color experiencing the highest rates of new HIV/AIDS infections, YWCHAC members—250 young women of color from the city’s most marginalized neighborhoods—are driving change through sexual and reproductive health education and outreach. YWCHAC trains 100 young women each year to make sure that youth have a seat at the table to shape the policies that will have a tremendous impact on their lives and health. They are currently fighting for implementation of three new City Council bills to track and evaluate the state of sexuality education and services in New York City schools, including curriculum, medical services and staff, and health screenings. Despite the bills’ passage, no budgetary allocations have been made, and in a political context that threatens reproductive justice nationwide, YWCHAC’s advocacy is more critical than ever. $10,000
YWCHAC
RISE
Innovative Activism grants support groups that use the arts, culture, and technology to tell stories that challenge mainstream narratives, as well as groups building alternative institutions that make economic and social justice a lived reality for more New Yorkers. These grants help build the creative toolboxes of activists to work together with artists and cultural workers to engage and strengthen communities.
Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO)
For over 35 years, CTWO has convened young activists from all over the country to teach them the science and art of community organizing, from fundamentals like outreach and fundraising to trainings on the most cutting-edge political strategies for today’s social justice movements. CTWO has trained more than 450 organizers through its flagship training program, helped developed many prominent leaders across the social justice field, and incubated successful organizations, including Applied Research Center (now Race Forward) $10,000
and Californians for Justice. CTWO’s trainings have built lasting bonds between organizers of color, giving them a support base that will help sustain their participation in social movements for the long haul.
Global Action Project (G.A.P.)
G.A.P. is training the next generation of media activists, including immigrants, refugees, and LGBTQ youth, to tell their own stories. G.A.P. provides intensive leadership and media production training for youth organizers who are on the front lines of critical issues citywide. To date, G.A.P. has created over 175 award-winning and critically-acclaimed videos, including $10,000
17
GLOBAL ACTION PROJECT
films on the school-to-prison pipeline and LGBTQ youth homelessness. Additionally, G.A.P. has trained thousands of youth and developed an award-winning media production, analysis, and popular education curriculum that has been adopted and used by hundreds of organizations and educators nationwide.
Hattie Carthan Community Food Projects
Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, is a historically Black neighborhood facing high levels of poverty, crime, urban blight, displacement, and joblessness among young adults resulting from decadeslong disinvestment. For Hattie Carthan Community Food Projects, economic empowerment starts with improving community health. Members of all generations take charge of community revitalization projects, contributing hundreds of hours to the design, maintenance, and operation of a historic garden, herb farm, apothecary, and farmers markets. Since 2009, Hattie Carthan has created green jobs for youth of color while expanding fresh food access. Last year, their volunteers gave 57 cooking demonstrations and provided weekly gardening, science, and nutrition workshops to hundreds of children and community youth. $10,000
THE BLK PROJEK
NY Civic Engagement Table (NYCET)
Voter engagement ensures the participation and representation of underrepresented communities and is a key strategy for many grassroots organizing groups. Many, however, lack the resources and tools to conduct the deep analysis and advocacy needed to meaningfully increase civic participation. NYCET is comprised of over 40 organizations dedicated to the civic engagement and representation of people of color, youth, women, and low-income communities. NYCET partners pool their resources to gain access to sophisticated voter engagement tools, data analysis, and trainings, resulting in not only significant cost savings, but also higher quality civic engagement $10,000
across New York State. And, by bringing together a wide range of partners, NYCET inspires unlikely but strategic relationships that allow for collaboration and sharing of best practices across issue areas and communities.
Rise
The Administration for Children’s Services is an intrusive presence in the lives of thousands of poor families in New York City, and yet nationwide, families’ direct experiences and recommendations are rarely included in efforts to improve the child welfare system. Rise believes that parents’ voices are critical to guiding child welfare practitioners to become more responsive to the needs of parents and communities that they serve. $10,000
HATTIE CARTHAN COMMUNITY FOOD PROJECTS
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NY CIVIC ENGAGEMENT TABLE
For 10 years, Rise has trained parents to write and share their experiences in a print and online magazine that reaches over 8,000 policymakers and practitioners. Through Rise’s new public speaking program, parents are empowered to lead trainings for child welfare professionals, meet directly with child welfare leadership to influence policy and practice, and promote best practices and awareness in parent engagement.
Sure We Can
Approximately 5,000 New Yorkers collect recyclables from the trash to as their primary source of income. After their hard work, “canners” are often mistreated when they attempt to redeem their collected recycleables. In Brooklyn, over 300 canners have formed a cooperative, Sure We Can, $10,000
THE WORKING WORLD
to provide a safe location and fair value for items that would otherwise wind up in landfills. Sure We Can redeemed a record 10 million empty cans and bottles last year, serving as a model for sustainable culture and green jobs for the most vulnerable New Yorkers.
Urban Farm grew 200 pounds of healthy, nutritious, and affordable food in its first growing year. Inspired by the Black Panthers Free Breakfast program, the BLK Projek meets basic human needs while delivering important political education to the communities it serves.
The BLK Projek
The Women’s Organizing Network (WON)
Poverty, chronic hunger, and the absence of healthy, nutrient-rich food options are some of the most pressing problems in the Bronx. The BLK Projek believes that jobs with dignity and living wages would enable people to feed their families quality, affordable food. The BLK Projek creates viable economic opportunities for women and children while delivering quality affordable food to the neighborhood. Their community-run partner Libertad $10,000
SURE WE CAN
Women organizers face gender and racial biases that prevent them from success, including rising to higher levels of leadership within their organizations. WON believes that women’s experiences and leadership are central to victorious social justice campaigns, and its diverse community of women, including organizers and executive directors, provides the support members need to succeed and advance within the social justice movement. WON fights for structural change within base-building organizations through creative participatory methods that bring women’s voices to the conversation; consciousness-raising methodologies; infusing a strong gender analysis into campaign development; and organizational development to transform processes and cultures. WON is creating a stronger and more inclusive progressive movement in New York City. $10,000
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N O R T H S TA R F U N D.O R G ADVISORY BOARD
Gene Carroll Maria Hinojosa Craig Kaplan Pamela Koslow Monami Maulik Iris Morales Arva Rice John Sayles Cornel West, Ph.D. Barbara Winslow In Memoriam: David Hunter, 1916-2000 Grace Paley, 1922-2007 Michael Ratner, 1943-2016
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
David Alexander Nisha Atre, Chair Jennifer Flynn Andrew Goldberg Amber Guild Pierre Hauser Asa Johnson Lloyd Martinez Gonzalo Mercado Christine Parker Zahida Pirani Mark Reed Lisa Steglich Alvarez Symonette Candis Tolliver Michael Waterman Maggie Williams In Memoriam: Betty Kapetanakis 1952–2002
COMMUNITY FUNDING COMMITTEE
Zakiyah Ansari Susanna Blankley Ana Liza Caballes Jennifer Flynn Katie Lindsay Kesi Foster Gisela Gamper Mo George Amaha Kassa Aber Kawas Sam J. Miller cori schmanke parrish Natalie Peña Olympia Perez Adilka Pimentel Zahida Pirani Rob Robinson Rhiya Trivedi
Worker Owned Rockaway Cooperatives (WORCs) / The Working World
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the Rockaways needed diverse economic development strategies to create change for the working poor. WORCs incubates worker-owned cooperatives—a more inclusive business development model for lowincome people—that minimizes the risk of debt accumulation. So far, WORCs has helped successfully launch a construction company, a bakery, and a screen-printing business. Far Rockaway residents receive free business classes and low-interest “non-extractive” financing, repaid only when the businesses begin to generate profit. In addition to strengthening and scaling these businesses, WORCs continues to incubate new projects and convert existing larger-scale businesses in the Rockaways to worker ownership. $10,000
North Star Fund awards an annual grant in memory of C. Edwin Baker, a long-time North Star Fund donor and activist legal scholar devoted to First Amendment rights and media justice. This year’s grantee is Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. Fusing art and activism, TONYC nurtures the creative talents of those directly impacted by injustice to share their stories and become powerful advocates for social change.
NORTH STAR FUND STAFF
Interim Executive Director
Elz Cuya Jones
Deputy Director of Resources and Strategy
cori schmanke parrish
Deputy Director of Programs and Operations
Helen Stillman
Donor Program Director
Kofo Anifalaje
Development Officer
Jennifer Arieta Program Officer
Adam Liebowitz
Food and Environment Program Officer
Kate Coley
Development Coordinator
Jodi Doff
Executive Coordinator
Catherine Eusebio
Communications Coordinator Program Assistant
Alison Park
Communications Consultant
TONYC partners with communities facing discrimination to imagine creative solutions and inspire collective action. Using innovative theater exercises, TONYC presents interactive plays based on actors’ real life stories of injustice to create sociopolitical change. Through creative dialogue led by the actors, TONYC determines the need for new or amended policies and laws with advocacy organizations and legislators. At TONYC’s annual festival, elected officials watch the plays and commit to policy solutions voted on by the audience. To date, TONYC has presented over 300 performances and continues to engage a growing pool of activists, policy makers, actors, and audiences. $10,000
ED BAKER GRANTEE
Richard Burns
Beatrice Lors-Rousseau
Theatre of the Oppressed NYC (TONYC)
THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED NYC