Participants
ReDefining Economic Development NYC
The following organizations participated in the first event held by ReDefining Economic Development NYC, "Defining Economic Development." If your organization is active in accountable and sustainable economic development work in NYC or concerned about these issues, click here to get involved in the project.
AFSCME District Council 37
Website: www.dc37.net
ARIVA
Website: www.arivaonline.com
ARIVA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting individual wealth and economic development in low-and-moderate income communities by providing financial literacy and improving access to financial services.
Asian Americans For Equality
Website: www.aafe.org
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU
Contact: Annette Bernhardt, (212) 998-6338 Website: www.brennancenter.org
The Brennan Center for Justice combines legal advocacy, social science research, and policy development to improve the quality of jobs, with a particular focus on low-wage workers and immigrant workers. Through our Economic Justice project, we have advocated for living wage and minimum wage increases, the expansion of health care to workers, and greater enforcement of workplace violations.
CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities
Website: www.caaav.org
Community Voices Heard
Contact: Sondra Youdelman, (212) 860-6001 Website: www.cvhaction.org
CVH is currently engaged in issue identification work in East and Central Harlem about issues that are impacting the community. While we are not solely focused on economic develoment issues, the things that keep coming up are connected to Economic Development - specifically concerns about housing affordabiltiy and accessibility due to increased gentrification and real estate development impacting the community - particularly the displacement of low-income renters and the perceived pressure to dismantle/eliminate NYCHA housing in the neighborhood. Residents are also concerend about the impact of rising rents on small local businesses. CVH is engaged in political education, leadership development and trainings about economic subsidies and the planning process. This work is less focused on a particular campaign - but is general in nature and helps to move our leaders and members into thinking about the potential to work on city wide economic development campaigns like the LMDC, WTC Re-Building Work and the Westside Stadium campaign.
Congregation B'nai Jeshurun
Contact: Laura Horwitz, (212) 787-7600 Website: www.bj.org
B’nai Jeshurun is a progressive, egalitarian, participatory congregation, committed to serving God through a revitalized Jewish experience. With over 3500 members, we share a rich history of social action engagement, and embrace the responsibility to unite and mobilize our congregation for social change. We provide direct services that address the immediate needs and improve the lives of others in our community, and organize congregants to build relationships with one another, to identify issues of shared concern, and to advocate for social change. As the only faith community to sit on Jobs with Justice’s organizing committee for the Health Care Security Act Campaign, we played an important role in providing a moral voice and religious context to this campaign. We ultimately lead outreach efforts to 15 other faith communities to raise awareness of the campaign, participated in a 700 person accountability session with the Speaker of the NYC Council held at our synagogue, and took follow up actions to push the legislation forward. We intend to be similarly involved in further economic justice and accountable development campaigns as approved by our social action membership.
Domestic Workers United
Contact: Aijen Poo, (718) 220-7391 x 11 Website: www.domesticworkersunited.org
Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE)
Contact: Ilana Berger, (718) 852-2960 x 308 Website: www.furee.org
Fifth Avenue Committee
Contact: Michelle de la Uz, (718) 237-2017 Website: www.fifthave.org
We seek to increase economic opportunity for low- and moderate-income people by creating jobs, training, and new community enterprises in sectors that pay a living wage and offer opportunities for career development. We also assist hundreds of neighborhood residents with job searches and interviews, training programs, and job readiness.
Fiscal Policy Institute
Contact: James Parrot, (212) 721-5624 Website: www.fiscalpolicy.org
Fordham Law
Contact: Brian Glick, (212) 636-7054 Website: www.fordham.edu
Students provide transactional (non-litigation) representation to low-income community groups that work for social and economic justice. Current clients include Dominican Women's Development Center, Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC-NY), Taxi Workers Alliance and West Harlem Environmental Action. Projects range from a health clinic and worker-owned restaurant to a battered women's shelter and community environmental justice center. We are supporting efforts by Harlem groups to negotiate a community benefits agreement in exchange for Columbia University's planned expansion into their neighborhood. In addition, students help small grassroots groups to incorporate, draft bylaws and prepare to apply for tax exemption. Practice areas include nonprofit corporations, tax, real estate, land use, commercial leases, contracts, project finance, and administrative law. Skills range from interviewing, counseling, drafting and negotiating to community legal education, policy advocacy, group representation and law and organizing.
Forest Hills Community House
Contact: Zoe Sullivan, (718) 237-2017
The Forest Hills Community House is a settlement house that was created around 30 years ago as a way to connect the then new housing project residents with the existing Forest Hills Community. We are not an economic development organization. The development work that we are doing is focused in Jackson Heights where a group of people are taking steps to open a branch of a community development credit union, Bethex Federal Credit Union. Bethex has also been in operation for over 30 years, and serves a low-income population in the Bronx, so the credit union's staff are familiar with many of the issues facing the largely immigrant community of Queens. Another employment-related initiative is a collaboration with CUNY Law School's Immigrant Rights Clinic. Some third-year law students are holding a series of trainings for adult English-as-a-Second-Language students about their rights as workers. The aim of these workshops is that these newly trained people will act as resources for others in the community facing exploitation or discrimination at work.
Good Jobs New York
Contact: Bettina Damiani, (212) 721-7996 Website: www.goodjobsny.org
Good Jobs New York promotes policies that hold government officials and corporations accountable to the taxpayers, particularly when economic development agencies give subsidies to large corporations that threaten to leave New York City.
Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES)
Contact: Damaris Reyes, (212) 358-1231 Website: www.goles.org
Institute for Women and Work
Website: www.ilr.cornell.edu/extension/iww/default.html
International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 805
Contact: Sandy Pope, (718) 609-6401 Website: www.teamsterslocal805.org
Teamsters Local 805 represents drivers, warehouse workers, clericals and salespeople in food and convenience store distributors. We also represent warehouse and clericals in electronics (Panasonic, Sony, etc) as well as custodians, tradespeople and food service workers at Fordham University. Our geographic area covers about a 75 mile radius of New York City with most of our members in Long Island, the burroughs and North Jersey. We have only recently entered the world of political action in NYC. We are currently fighting to save 75 warehouse jobs at the Red Hook Piers.
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice
Website: www.jfrej.org
Laborers Local 79
Contact: Oona Adams, (212) 465-7942 Website: www.masontenders.org/local79/79home.html
Laborers' Local 79 is involved in the construction end of economic development. We work with contractors and developers by supplying a skilled workforce. We also work with local communities to provide jobs for community members through local hire language and apprenticeship opportunities.
Lawyers Alliance
Contact: Neil Stevenson, (212) 219-1800 Website: www.lany.org
Lawyers Alliance is the leading provider of free and low-cost business law services to nonprofit community development organizations that are working to improve the quality of life for low-income individuals and communities in New York City. Our staff includes eleven full time attorneys with expertise in New York not-for-profit law, as well as specialized knowledge of areas in which our clients are active, such as economic development, affordable housing, services to new immigrant communities, children, youth and the elderly, and other vital social services. Take advantage of our Resource Call Hotline at Ext. 224.
Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union
Website: www.lespfcu.org
New York City Carpenters Labor Management Corporation
Contact: Elly Spicer, (212) 366-7458 Website: www.nycdistrictcouncil.com
New York City Carpenters Labor Management Corporation is concerned with the construction aspects of community development. The District Council seeks to increase opportunities for signatory contractors as well as the market share of construction work. We develop relationships with the communities in which our members build and respond to their needs around housing and jobs. We demand that affordable housing be built properly and with skilled labor.
New York City Human Rights Initiative
Contact: Barbara Schulman, (646) 602-5929 Website: www.nychri.org
The NYC Human Rights Initiative, a unique citywide coalition of almost 100 organizations, seeks to ensure participation, non-discrimination and accountability in city governance by integrating international human rights tools and standards into local policy-making. We have developed landmark local legislation based on the universal human rights model, and we invite your organization to endorse the project at www.nychri.org.
New York Industrial Retention Network (NYIRN)
Contact: Michael Freedman-Schnapp, (212) 404-6990 x 14 Website: www.nyirn.org
The New York Industrial Retention Network is a citywide, economic development organization that seeks to promote a diverse economy that provides entrepreneurial and employment opportunities for all New Yorkers by strengthening New York City’s manufacturing sector based on principles of economic and environmental justice and sustainability. NYIRN works with the citywide Zoning for Jobs coalition to raise public awareness of the important role blue-collar jobs play in the City’s economy and to create new zoning and financing tools that will support industrial jobs. These new tools will create stable industrial areas while also allowing for the development of much needed affordable housing, open space and other amenities. NYIRN also provides direct business assistance to over 500 companies a year, primarily around real estate issues, but also on topics as varied as marketing, tax benefits, energy assistance, green manufacturing, and local sourcing.
NY Jobs with Justice
Contact: Carrie Brunk, (212) 631-0886 x 5639 Website: www.nyjwj.org
NY Jobs with Justice is a permanent coalition of community, labor, religious, and student organizations working toward social change in New York. In addition to supporting the economic justice efforts of our 75 member organizations, NY JwJ also leads innovative movement-building initiatives toward accountable economic development and healthcare for all. Our recent accountable economic development coalition efforts include the succesful TRADES' campaign for career-track construction jobs and better public housing, the successful Health Care Security Act campaign to set industry standards for good jobs with good benefits, and our current statewide campaign for reform of local economic development agencies, the Initiative for Development Accountability. We are also a convenor of the ReDefining Economic Development NYC initiative to strengthen and grow the movement for sustainable and accountable development in New York.
Pratt Area Community Council
Contact: Melissa Lee, (718) 522-2613 Website: www.prattarea.org
Understanding the connection between a vigorous, job-producing economy and neighborhood vitality, PACC established an economic development program in 1997 to foster the stabilization of local businesses that meet area residents’ needs. In the ensuing years, PACC has provided workshops, counseling, loan application assistance, marketing services, and legal and other forms of technical assistance to hundreds of entrepreneurs. PACC’s Commercial Revitalization Unit is now focusing its efforts on establishing a Business Improvement District, and as Program Administrator of Main Street, to rehabilitating a stretch of mixed-use properties on a segment of Fulton Street in Clinton Hill to enhance the retail possibilities available to neighborhood residents.
Pratt Center for Community Development
Contact: Mafruza Khan, (718) 522-2613 x 6461 Website: www.prattcenter.org
The Pratt Center for Community Development works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers, by empowering communities to plan for and realize their futures. As part of Pratt Institute, we leverage professional skills - especially planning, architecture and public policy - to support community-based organizations in their efforts to improve neighborhood quality of life, attack the causes of poverty and inequality, and advance sustainable development. In pursuit of our mission, the Pratt Center works to advance the following strategic initiatives: 1) Helping Communities Build: We help community-based organizations representing low-income communities build physical development projects that address unmet needs and leverage innovation and change. 2) Planning for Equity: We work to ensure that low-income communities get a fair share of the benefits of physical and economic development, and are not burdened with a disproportionate share of the costs. 3) Promoting Sustainability and Environmental Justice: We support and advance grassroots organizations and movements that push the New York City region toward environmental sustainability and equity.
Ravens - Friends of Poe Park
Contact: John Rozankowski, (718) 361-3535
Restaurant Opportunities Center of NY (ROC-NY)
Contact: Saru Jayaraman, (212) 343-1771 Website: www.rocny.org
We are a membership based organization of restaurant workers who are fighting to improve working conditions in NYC restaurants. Among our projects is a workplace justice campaign where we organize workers to fight against exploitative owners (current focus is on Red Eye Grill where 55 workers have come forward to sue their owners for 3 million dollars) and a policy campaign that will hold restaurant owners accountable to their workers on such issues as minimum wage, overtime, discrimination and workers compensation. We also offer free classes to sharpen participants' restaurant skills (ie bartending classes, server classes, etc) and we organize a cooperatively owned restaurant, COLORS, just south of Astor Place. We envision this work-owned restaurant to be the first of many more to come!
Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU)
Contact: Carrie Gleason, (212) 684-5300 Website: www.rwdsu.info
The RWDSU is committed to the improvement of the retail environment in New York City. This goal has become extremely important since the retail sector is providing hundreds of thousands of jobs for working class New Yorkers and is a vital component of most major development projects in the City. To accomplish this goal we are establishing partnerships with community-based organizations throughout the City. By working in partnership with such groups as Make the Road by Walking in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, we hope to change the retail sector in communities by transforming bad jobs into good unionized ones. In neighborhoods such as Bushwick the workers in the stores live in the community, so that improvements in working conditions will have a direct impact on the community as a whole. Our partnership with the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition aims to shape the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory. Here we hope to insure that the development of the Armory will provide major benefits for the community and that the retail component will provide for the local residents good jobs and not low-paying, no-benefit, dead end ones. Elsewhere the RWDSU’s partnerships with community groups combine both of these goals. These efforts seek to change the existing community retail jobs into good ones, and to insure that new developments will provide decent unionized work.
Save Our Parks
Website: www.saveourparks.blogspot.com
Sanctuary for Families
Website: www.sanctuaryforfamilies.org
We are local residents who are opposed to the taking of Macombs Dam and Mullaly parks by the Yankees for a new stadium. We are also against the construction of an additional 4,500 parking spaces which will attract that many or more cars to an area which is already known as "Asthma Alley". There are better alternatives: save and renovate the present stadium, build on the present stadium's site, or build on what are now parking garages south of the present site. But keep your hands off our parks!
Seedco
Website: www.seedco.org
United Food and Commerical Workers Local 1500
Website: www.ufcw1500.org
Urban Agenda/NYC Apollo
Contact: Joanne Derwin, (212) 827- 0200 Website: www.urbanagenda.org
Urban Agenda/NYC Apollo is working on creating sustainable jobs by promoting green high performance construction and while meeting the energy efficiency of the New York City.
Urban Justice Center Human Rights Project (UJC-HRP)
Contact: Ramona Ortega, (646) 602-5630 Website: www.urbanjustice.org/ic/projects/human.html
The international human rights framework articulates the right to basic necessities such as food, housing, health, and employment. The Urban Justice Center Human Rights Project (HRP), www.urbanjustice.org, attempts to situate domestic poverty and discrimination issues within this framework. We spearhead collaborative efforts to document, monitor, and report on economic human rights violations in the United States, and in New York City in particular, and then publicize our findings through publications, community education, and direct action. HRP also houses coordination of the New York City Human Rights Initiative (NYCHRI)
West Harlem Environmental Action (WEACT)
Contact: Kizzy M. Charles-Guzman, (212) 961-1000, Ext. 317 Website: www.weact.org
West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc. (WE ACT) is a non-profit, community-based, environmental justice organization dedicated to building community power to fight environmental racism and improve environmental health, protection and policy in communities of color. WE ACT accomplishes its mission through community organizing, education and training, advocacy and research, and public policy development. WE ACT carries out its work through 4 specific program areas that address current priorities: Environmental Health & Community-Based Research, Sustainable Development, Environmental Justice Advocacy & Government Accountability, and Movement Building. WE ACT’s economic development work is centered around the Harlem Corridor project, which is focused on creating guidance for developers to make their commercial development greener, healthier and more sustainable; while protecting their economic bottom line. In demonstration, WE ACT is currently developing its own home—a green building in West Harlem’s Hamilton Heights Historic District which will embody WE ACT’s guiding principles: community mobilization, knowledge-based action, leadership around environmentally responsible technologies, and Environmental Justice movement expansion. In the design, building and operation of this center WE ACT will be generating local jobs in a greener, less toxic space. Also as part of the Harlem Corridor project, WE ACT is focused on the Columbia University expansion proposal. We are working in collaboration with other organizations to ensure that the University is held accountable for the impacts of its proposed expansion.
Women's Housing & Economic Development Corporation (WHEDCO)
Contact: Sam Marks, 718-839-1181 Website: www.whedco.org
WHEDCO is dedicated to eradicating poverty by providing people with the tools and support they need to enter and succeed in the economic mainstream. At a time when the gap between rich and poor is greater than ever, WHEDCo narrows the divide through uniquely integrated programs in the areas of childcare, education, job-training, and small business development. Our housing development pushes the boundaries in affordable housing design and construction, creating beautiful, sustainable communities.
Jobs with Justice
