The Broadsheet
"A contribution (of $150,000) went to the Freedom Agenda project at the Urban Justice Center (located on Rector Street), which seeks to empower formerly incarcerated individuals.”City & State
“The mayor’s office could step in right now,” [Victoria] Phillips, [a community, health, & justice organizer with the Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center] said. “There’s nothing new about the outrageous barbarian conditions except for the people who pass the buck. The City Council passes it to the mayor’s office and the mayor’s office passes it to the DOC.”Newsdesk
'"Various community organizations have come together to host a Three Kings Day giveaway on Thursday, January 6 at Corona Plaza for the second year in a row. Organizations like QEDC, Queens Museum, the Street Vendor Project and other organizations graced the party with this event, while also hoping to slowly revamp Corona Plaza.”NY Times
But Craig Hughes, a supervising social worker at the Urban Justice Center, said that outreach teams would be hampered by a lack of stable and permanent housing for the homeless population. “It’s to a good degree smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Hughes said. “Provide outreach instead of housing, but frame it as something more, and then flood the trains with cops.”CBS News
This city is incapable of protecting the people in their custody. So then no one should be in their custody,” said Brandon Holmes of Freedom Agenda.City Limits
But those earlier draft plans, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request by advocates from the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project and shared with City Limits, offer a look at the city Health Department’s initial recommendations for the moves, at odds with how the actual transfers have been carried out since.City Limits
Street vendor advocates have noticed the recent uptick in the number of tickets. “Drawing a ticket helps nobody,” says Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the Street Vendor Project.Next City
“Some would move, others wouldn’t,” Vivar says. “Trash was being left out, people were fighting among each other. We started going around to talk to people about the Street Vendor Project, about what was going on. One day I had proposed a meeting and we talked to three or four other longtime vendors and brought everyone together.”Ars Technica
"The undersigned organizations committed to civil rights, human rights, and digital rights around the world [including UJC's Sex Workers Project] are writing to urge Apple to abandon the plans it announced on 5 August 2021 to build surveillance capabilities into iPhones, iPads, and other Apple products...Though these capabilities are intended to protect children and to reduce the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), we are concerned that they will be used to censor protected speech, threaten the privacy and security of people around the world, and have disastrous consequences for many children."NY Daily News
Can you do the impossible? If not, you should not survive, or even exist! That’s what the city is effectively saying to street vendors with its decision to send the NYPD to force street vendors to close in the Bronx, the borough with the highest unemployment rate of any county in the state last year. Hundreds of fellow New Yorkers have turned to street vending to survive the past year, becoming entrepreneurs in a difficult time. Street vendors are primarily immigrants, people of color, military veterans — exactly the New Yorkers who need our city’s support right now.© 2023 Urban Justice Center | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
