New York Rural Organizing Portfolio

Alianza Agricola

Mission Statement

La Alianza Agrícola is a leadership and membership group of immigrant farmworkers in the Western and Central New York regions. The group was formed to create a better future for migrant farmworker families and their communities in New York. As part of their participation in the group, members of Alianza Agrícola learn how to advocate for their own good, grow power, and develop leadership skills. Members participate in efforts to educate the community about farmworkers and their work in this region. They are supported by many ally groups as well as individuals who fight alongside the Agricultural Alliance for justice for the immigrant community.

La Alianza Agrícola es un grupo de liderazgo y membresía de trabajadores agrícolas inmigrantes en las regiones del oeste y centro de Nueva York. El grupo se formó para crear un mejor futuro para las familias y comunidades de trabajadores agrícolas inmigrantes aquí en Nueva York. A través de la participación en el grupo, los miembros de Alianza Agrícola se toman el poder de abogar para su propio bien y desarrollar capacidades de liderazgo. Los miembros participan en esfuerzos para educar a la comunidad acerca de los trabajadores agrícolas y su labor en esta región.somos apoyados por muchos grupos de aliados además de individuos quienes luchan al lado de la Alianza Agrícola para justicia para la comunidad inmigrante.

Organization Description 

The Alianza Agrícola (Agricultural Alliance) is a group of farmworkers that strives to improve the living and working conditions of the im/migrant community throughout New York State. Alianza members participate in and lead advocacy efforts, educational/community outreach campaigns, and leadership development programs. While members live and work primarily in Western and Central New York, they collaborate with organizations around the state. In recent years, the Alianza and its partners won victories that guarantee drivers’ licenses for all residents in NY state, improve working conditions for agricultural workers, and protect their right to organize. Despite these victories, the im/migrant community in Upstate NY continues to face challenges that negatively impact their physical, social, and emotional well-being. The Alianza Agrícola actively addresses these factors and finds solutions that improve the lives of the organization’s members as well as the immigrant community at large.

Areas Served: Western New York, Finger Lakes, Central New York, and Capital Region

 

Alliance of Families for Justice

Mission Statement

The mission of the Alliance of Families for Justice is to support families of incarcerated people and people who are justice-involved, empower them as advocates, and enable them to marshal their collective power to catalyze systemic change.

Organization Description

Currently and formerly incarcerated people, their families, and their loved ones are immense sources of untapped political power. We harness this power to catalyze widespread transformation of the justice system. As the criminal justice system disproportionately impacts low-income Black and Brown people, and our community reflects these demographics, our work is a powerful force in advancing racial justice more broadly as well. Providing a safe space for directly-impacted families to speak openly about their experiences without stigma or shame, and be in community with others who share similar lived experiences, is incredibly transformative. What makes our healing work even more impactful is that we combine it with a transformative model for change. Once families feel supported, we provide leadership development and advocacy opportunities, so they can not only heal their own families, but also fight for a better world so other families and future generations will not have to endure what they have endured.

Fighting for systemic change is in itself healing and empowering. Our programs all align with our “support, empower, mobilize” theory of change. We provide support through our Family and Legal Support Units, which offer free behavioral health and legal assistance for incarcerated people and their families. We empower our community through voter engagement in directly-impacted communities, advocacy and communications skills training, and community organizing meetings, conferences, and healing retreats. We mobilize by implementing policy and advocacy campaigns that address issues directly related to the injustices our families endure. Our Youth Empowerment Project provides leadership development and evidence-based emotional literacy curricula to direct strategies on: Advocacy, Base Building, Healing / Restorative Justice, Leadership Development, Organizing, Voter Registration / GOTV

Areas Served: Ithaca (servicing Central New York) and Albany (servicing the Capital Region)

 

Black Love Resists in the Rust

Mission Statement

Black Love Resists in the Rust (BLRR) is a member-led, abolitionist organization that seeks to build and fortify strong, resourced, thriving communities in Buffalo, NY. BLRR's work has heavily focused on exploring alternatives to policing and reducing the harms of the Buffalo police department and all carceral systems.

Organization Description

BLRR is made up of Black and Brown folks who are from, live in, and/or work in the City of Buffalo. We are intentionally intergenerational and are made up of trans, queer, and cis-hetero folks. In addition to this, we center people who are directly-impacted by policing and incarceration. We are member-led and BLRR members make the bulk of  decisions in the organization. Our Advisory Board is composed of organizational members, and key stakeholders in the Buffalo community and is primarily Black and Brown. The Board makes key decisions around fundraising, or things that will drastically shift the organization's work, or structure. The Board also oversees the Director. Our Director is a Black woman from Buffalo's East Side. She manages staff, manages the organization's fiscal responsibilities, fundraises, and leads campaigns.

Areas Served: Western New York (Buffalo and Tonawanda)

 

Eastern Farm Workers Association

Mission Statement

The mission of Eastern Farm Workers Association (EFWA) is to create a self-help organization to address the survival needs of Suffolk County’s lowest paid workers and families, and to build long-term solutions to our poverty conditions. We believe that change is most effectively brought about by involving the people most affected by poverty in actions that build solutions to its root causes, while reaching out and involving the broader Long Island community – students, professionals, faith-based groups, civic organizations, producers, business owners and others of concern – in our organizing work based on the understanding that we have more in common than we have differences and we are dependent upon each other to achieve economic prosperity and well-being for all and create a thriving and sustainable community. Central to accomplishing our mission is pulling our members out of the grips of the most devastating poverty conditions so they have the stability needed to participate as much as possible and take leadership roles in building our efforts to effect long-term change. We do this by organizing self-help benefit programs available to members free-of-charge.

Organization Description

EFWA is a free and voluntary unincorporated private membership association founded in 1972 by migrant and seasonal farm workers & other low-income working families in Suffolk County. Our membership includes those employed in farm work doing planting, pruning, picking, packing & other agricultural-related jobs, low wage service workers & those between jobs or too disabled or elderly to work anymore. Membership is open to all who work these jobs or would if able and they paid enough to survive. Membership dues are 62¢ a month and voluntary. To help members survive, EFWA organizes a free-of-charge, 11-point membership Benefit Program of emergency food, clothing, preventive medical care, non-emergency dental care, “Know Your Law” sessions, legal advice, advocacy & more. Benefits extend to a member’s entire family. We have joined together 1000s of low-income workers from all ethnic backgrounds who suffer common problems: lack of sufficient income to provide for basic survival. Members formed the Suffolk County Workers Benefit Council to oversee the Benefit Program and decide on collective actions & campaigns to address harmful policies & practices affecting them.

Areas Served: Suffolk County, Long Island

 

For the Many

Mission Statement

For The Many is building a grassroots movement of everyday people to transform New York so that it works for all of us - no matter what we look like, where we come from, or how much money we have. For too long, billionaires and greedy corporations have rigged the system, and tried to pit us against each other by blaming our problems on people of color and immigrants. So we are bringing people together across race, age, and language to fight for laws and vote in elections that put the power back in our hands. Andit's working. We are one of the fastest growing statewide organizations, and winning victories that change millions of lives and bring us closer to a state and country for the many.

Organization Description

We do multiracial, intergenerational, and bilingual base-building for social justice in rural upstate New York. We organize people who are Black, Latinx, and white; high-schoolers to elders; and in both Spanish and English. We organize people across our differences because we know it will take a majority of us to win - but we center the needs and leadership of working class people of color in our organizing. We are a multi-issue organization (that works on both local and statewide campaigns) because we don’t believe people lead single-issue lives. And we believe we can organize our largest base and have our biggest impact by working across multiple issue areas while prioritizing our campaigns based on how much a specific campaign at a specific time is (a) winnable, (b) transformative, (c) conducive for expanding our base. Building more power for social justice in rural, suburban, and small-city upstate New York is key to advancing statewide social justice projects - yet this remains severely under-resourced compared to projects in major cities like New York City, Buffalo, and Rochester. As one of the only upstate base-building organizations founded in and focused on rural, suburban, and small-city Upstate New York we think it’s critical we keep growing our capacity and expanding geographically into currently unorganized geographic areas.

Areas Served: Hudson Valley and Capital Region

 

Justice for Migrant Families

Mission Statement

Justice for Migrant Families WNY is a grassroots organization based in Western New York that supports, advocates and organizes for and with individuals and families impacted by immigration policy and enforcement, including undocumented community members, people in immigrant detention, and LGBTQ+ immigrants. We envision a world that supports systems characterized by equity, dignity, justice, and radical welcome for people who migrate. We envision a world in which stories of people and places are honored, stories of indigeneity, migration, and interconnection, and where we also remember the story of how we dismantled the detention system and began healing from it.

Organization Description

JFMF believes that change happens when people with direct experiences move towards confronting oppressive systems. Our work is flexible and dynamic, but we center on 3 core areas: direct support for people in immigrant detention, community and movement building with migrant communities and their allies, and policy advocacy and organizing work.

We believe that people can create powerful change and confront systems when their basic needs are met. This means that our organization puts peoples' physical, emotional, spiritual and safety needs in the center of our community organizing work. We have seen the incredible leadership, bravery and strategic brilliance of people who need a ride, who need support in finding temporary or permanent shelter, who are currently being detained by ICE and need commissary funds. By working together as a community to meet our community needs, we create more possibilities for directly impacted people to take part in their own liberation, however suits them best.

We believe in people power; moving people who have direct experiences to shift narratives and push decision makers to meet our needs now and in the future. We engage in policy and advocacy work on a local, regional and state level, working to create laws and policies that support the humanity and rights of all migrants in the US. We also work to expose and end the inhumane immigration detention and deportation machine that harms so many of our people here and around the globe. We organize with folks whose stories need to be heard by policy makers, presidents and potluck tables.

Areas Served: Western New York (Buffalo and Batavia)

 

Mujeres Divinas

Mission Statement

The mission of Mujeres Divinas is to empower and support all women and their families by providing a space to educate, advocate and unify their voices with dignity. Our vision is to live in a just world in which all women are empowered to be leaders within their own communities.

Organization Description

Mujeres Divinas is a group of Latina immigrant women that come together to create a safe space where they can learn with and among one another essential skills for leadership development and advocacy techniques. Furthermore, to empower and improve their communities, as well as to improve their own lives and the lives of other women at home and at work.

Altogether, our network involves over 200 people in Wayne, Ontario, Oswego, Monroe, and Genesee counties. Our initiatives and activities include: educational workshops, community and cultural events, participation in conferences, organic community garden project, food assistance and mutual aid, assistance with driver’s license access, accompaniment to immigration proceedings, transportation support, information-sharing with our community, and bridging relationships between agencies, non-profit organizations, and our community.

Areas Served: Western New York, the Fingerlakes, and Southern Tier.

 

Rural Migrant Ministry 

Mission Statement

Rural & Migrant Ministry (RMM) works for the creation of a just rural New York State through: 1) Nurturing leadership, 2) Standing with the disenfranchised, especially farmworkers and rural workers, 3) Changing unjust systems and structures. We implement our mission through three program areas: youth empowerment, popular education, and accompaniment. RMM believes that a just, sustainable food system involves all of us and that those who courageously call out for justice need others to stand with them - to accompany them in this quest. The accompaniment program of RMM is about working together, learning from and inspiring one another. Our education program prepares workers to be at the tables where the decisions which affect their lives are made and educates allies in how to be effective. Our youth empowerment program is an array of positive youth development programs. Its purpose is to enable rural, immigrant/migrant youth to confront their own experiences of prejudice and inequality, develop leadership skills and create a community of support.

Organization Description

Rural & Migrant Ministry Inc., is a non-sectarian state-wide organization serving rural New York State. We carry out our mission through four Rural Worker Education Centers, through which we implement a Youth Empowerment Leadership Development Program, the education of workers and potential allies through our Rural Academy of the People and the accompaniment and empowerment of rural workers through a statewide network of allies and supporters. Rural & Migrant Ministry (RMM) is a 501[c][3] founded 40 years ago to stand in solidarity with disenfranchised rural workers, especially migrant farmworkers and their families in the Hudson Valley, NY, and bridge the gap in social services. Today, RMM hosts 4 Rural Worker Education Centers across the state in Long Island, Wayne County New York, Sullivan County and in the Hudson Valley. Each Center encompasses the three components in how we implement our Mission – Education, Accompaniment and Youth Empowerment. From our very beginning we have sought to address policies and structures that deny farmworkers and other rural workers and their families equality and justice. We have done this by accompanying, organizing, and educating workers and youth as they sought to change these systems, and we have done this by organizing and educating a diversity of allies from the faith, labor and student communities to join us - using our privilege and access in support of isolated and marginalized rural communities.

Areas Served: Long Island, Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, and Hudson Valley.

 

SEPA Mujer

Mission Statement

SEPA Mujer aims to foster robust civic engagement, elevate women's and girls' leadership, and cultivate a gender-inclusive environment. Our dedicated efforts aim to empower individuals to actively participate in shaping their communities while championing and amplifying the voices of women and girls in leadership roles. We are committed to breaking down barriers for immigrant women and girls and creating an inclusive space where all genders can thrive, collaborate, and drive positive change.

Organization Description 

Our organization empowers members to become agents of social change through Civic Engagement/Leadership Development Training. Our efforts toward systemic and institutional change prioritize Know Your Rights, Gender Equity, Social Justice Campaigns, Legal representation for immigrants and victims of gender violence, Activating leadership within the next generation through the Girls A.C.T. program, Relocation of newly arrived families, Trauma-informed and culturally specific services to survivors and victims of gender violence, including domestic violence, sexual assault (intimate and non-intimate partners), harassment, stalking, and human trafficking (sex and labor). While our primary focus is women and girls, we recognize the importance of working with entire families and communities to engage them as systemic change agents. We operate three main programs: Immigration Legal Representation, Equity and Community Empowerment, and VIDA victim and survivor services.

Areas Served: Nassau and Suffolk Counties, Long Island (Hampton Bay, Huntington, Patchogue, Central Islip, and Riverside)

 

Shinnecock Indian Nation

Mission Statement

The Shinnecock Indian Nation is one of the oldest self-governing & sovereign Tribal Nations in the United States of America. Since time immemorial, the Shinnecock people have inhabited and been stewards of the lands known as Long Island, traditionally known in Algonquian as "Paumanok" or "Sewanaka". Currently, there are over 1,600 enrolled Shinnecock tribal citizens, with around half of this population residing on 1,000 acres of their unceded ancestral territory located in Southampton, NY. Shinnecock, along with 12 other original tribes of Long Island are known as "first contact tribes". This term refers to the fact that these original 13 tribes were the first to come in contact with European settlers and the first to experience the adverse effects of colonization.

Comparable to various Indigenous communities, the Shinnecock way of life, traditions, and culture have all been compromised due to settler colonialism and systemic oppression. However, despite the hardships and adversity faced since first contact, the Shinnecock people continue to persevere and ensure the preservation of Shinnecock traditions, culture, and history in honor of their ancestors.

Organization Description

The Shinnecock governmental organization is structured similarly to other municipalities. There are currently 17 governmental departments overseen by the seven-member Shinnecock Nation Council of Trustees including Housing, Transportation and Environmental departments. Throughout the existence of the organization, these departments have largely been funded through competitive federal grants designated for specific programs with strict reporting requirements. As time has passed and the organization continues to evolve, new departments and positions have been added to support the growing needs of the Shinnecock community.

Since funding sources have not always been readily available or easily accessible to the Shinnecock Nation and economic development opportunities have been few, individual tribal citizens and collective groups have created their own 501c3 non-profi t entities to provide direct and rapid response services to address on-going issues. These various issues include substandard housing repairs, food insecurity, mental health and suicide prevention, childcare services, continuing education and tuition assistance, birthwork, etc.

Areas Served: The Shinnecock Indian Nation (Southampton, Long Island)

 

Soul Fire Farm

Mission Statement 

Soul Fire Farm is committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system. We raise life-giving food and act in solidarity with people marginalized by food apartheid. With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of our ancestors, we work to reclaim our collective right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system. We bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills on sustainable agriculture, natural building, spiritual activism, health and environmental justice. We are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.

Organization Statement

Soul Fire Farm was founded in 2010 by a Black-Jewish family living in the South End of Albany, NY where they struggled to find fresh food to feed their young children. Their neighbors asked them to create “the farm for the people” and in 2006 the family began to seed the vision on 80 acres of Mohican land in nearby Grafton, NY. After four years of building soil and infrastructure on the land, the farm opened in fall 2010 with a doorstep vegetable and egg delivery program for low-income community members. In subsequent years, the farm added education and training programs and incorporated as a 501(c)3 non profit in 2016. We have since grown from a small family farm to a diverse team with a powerful voice in the national movement for food sovereignty. We have created model systems for sustainable food production, with farm fresh food distribution for 2,500+ individuals in marginalized communities; and trained 16,000+ youth and adults in best practices in farming and food sovereignty; reached 350,000+ people through our virtual and in person workshops and lectures; and published media for our collaborators in the movement with a readership of 100,000+. Until 2016, we did this work with 100% grassroots volunteer effort and no grant funding. Our most impactful programs include the Afro-Indigenous Farming Immersion, a weeklong residential intensive, which aims to reverse the dangerous decline of landowning farmers of color. Another impactful initiative is our incubation of the Northeast Farmer of Color Land Trust, which works actively on reparations and land rematriation for indigenous and Black earthkeepers in the northeast. We are constantly innovating in response to the needs of our community, committed to simultaneously doing the on-the-ground tangible projects and “moving the field” through leadership in regional and national movement work.

Areas Served: Capitol Region

 

Tompkins County Workers' Center

Mission Statement

The Mission of the Tompkins County Workers’ Center is to stand up with all people treated unfairly at work. We will support, advocate for, and seek to empower each other to create a more just community and world.

SUPPORT: We listen, provide information, encouragement and strategize with workers through our hotline, training, outreach, presentations and tabling.

ADVOCACY: We advocate with and on behalf of workers regardless of employment status who are being treated unfairly: to correct problems, end workers’ rights violations, improve conditions and set standards of employer behavior.

EMPOWERMENT: We encourage and deepen grassroots leaders’ organizing skills to create change in their own and others’ lives.

MOVEMENT-BUILDING: We educate and shape community values and standards of economic rights and employer behavior through networking, coalition-building and solidarity.

Organization Description

The Tompkins County Workers’ Center (TCWC) is a grassroots worker empowerment and labor rights membership organization, committed to being led by and building community power for institutional change to benefit the working poor. TCWC’s mission is to stand up with all people treated unfairly at work. Our ongoing programs– to build union power; win higher wages; assure worker rights; and to build a member-driven organization that reflects the diversity within our community – are the outcomes that give life to our mission. Our success in achieving these outcomes are measured by the unions that are formed and win contracts; the workers supported in engaging in workplace concerted action and the number that access and gain support through our workers’ rights hotline; and the businesses that commit to and pay living wages to their employees.

Areas Served: Central New York

 

Workers Center of Central New York

Mission Statement

The Workers’ Center of Central New York is a grassroots organization focused upon workplace and economic justice. Through community organizing, leadership development, popular education and policy advocacy, the Workers’ Center of Central New York aims to empower marginalized, low-wage workers to organize to combat workplace abuses, improve wages and working conditions, and build worker power throughout the community.

Organization Description

The Workers’ Center for Central New York is a grassroots, membership organization with half of our board members being comprised of worker leaders. The majority of our members are immigrant workers, primarily from Mexico and Guatemala and many are undocumented. We work at the intersection of immigrant rights and labor rights, racial justice, gender justice and worker justice. We currently have 4 full-time staff people, all of whom are fl uent in Spanish. We provide general information, consultations and educational resources to workers in low-income sectors in CNY and the North Country, but our focus is on organizing with our membership to create structural change, through legislative changes (such as the historic passage of the Farm Laborer Fair Labor Practices Act, the Greenlight Law, and the Excluded Workers Fund) and/or direct action, such as our campaign targeting Chobani for white-washing labor practices on their farms. We work closely with many partners and coalitions.

Areas Served: Central New York and North Country