The Center for Justice Innovation—and our operating programs—are regularly featured in the media. Here is a sampling of the press coverage of our work.
Brownsville, Brooklyn, gained 19 young mental health advocates thanks to the B-Well program, a collaboration between the Brownsville Community Justice Center, Transformation Counseling Services, and Pitkin Ave BID. A cohort of young adults aged 16 to 24 gathered each week to learn how to care for themselves, their mental health, and the broader community in an initiative funded through participatory budgeting. “We would love to have this program again to continue to raise awareness and create a large network of mental health advocates throughout the community,” said Mallory Thatch, senior program manager at Brownsville Community Justice Center.
Our RISE team joined residents, New York City Council Member Farah Louis, and other community organizations like Sports United to rally for a violence-free summer with a basketball tournament and youth resource fair in Flatbush, Brooklyn. The event, in recognition of Gun Violence Awareness Month, brought the community together for a day of fun, performance, and urgent calls for an end to gun violence from respected leaders in the community.
Dozens of middle school students from Launch Charter School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, joined up with our Save Our Streets team, school staff, and other members of the community to stage a walkout against gun violence to kick off Gun Violence Awareness Month. The walkout came after the young people spent months learning about the impacts of gun violence on their communities and many others. “They want the community to know that they're here and they're making noise to show that enough is enough. Gun violence needs to stop,” said Anthony Rowe, project director of our Neighbors in Action program.
More than 100 students in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, took a bold stand against gun violence in their own communities by participating in a walkout to mark the beginning of Gun Violence Awareness Month. The walkout was planned with support from the Launch Expeditionary Learning Charter School in collaboration with our Save Our Streets Brooklyn team, which works to prevent shootings and bring positive resources to young people at risk of getting involved in gun violence. Read more about the walkout, and the months of study and reflection that went into it, in the New York Times.
Robert Abruzzese recaps the official launch of our Street Action Network at the Brooklyn Public Library. The Street Action Network is a community research initiative that draws on the expertise of people with firsthand experience and high social capital in the streets to end gun violence. Hear from Co-Directors Basaime Spate and Javonte Alexander, as well as NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and our executive director, Courtney Bryan. Spate and Alexander take us through their experience with street networks, community research, and growing up as Black men in New York City while exploring the mission behind this new initiative.
The Inside Literary Prize, the first U.S. book award to be judged entirely by incarcerated people, will soon make its debut onto the national stage after months of reading and discussion by participants. “To choose an award is important for saying you’re part of the community, part of society. So much about being incarcerated says you’re not,” says Reginald Dwayne Betts, founder of Freedom Reads, which is supporting the award alongside the Center for Justice Innovation, the National Book Foundation, and bookstore owner Lori Feathers. In this issue of Poets&Writers, Betts and others expand on the humanizing impact of this literary experience on people serving time in prison.
For months, 113 households in NYCHA's Red Hook West Houses have gone without cooking gas; but an analysis by a group of law students in partnership with our Red Hook Community Justice Center found that such outages are far from unusual in New York City public housing. It also found that residents of public housing go without some key legal protections enjoyed by private tenants, making it harder for them to find accountability for outages and poor conditions. This opinion piece in City Limits makes the case for statewide reforms to provide relief for NYCHA residents living with utility outages, arguing that New York's warranty of habitability applies to all residents—not just those in private housing.
With support from Richmond County District Attorney Michael E. McMahon and NYC Council Member Kamillah Hanks, the Center announced several new youth programs coming to its Staten Island Justice Center. Ranging from restorative justice to placekeeping to entrepreneurship programming, these initiatives will create lasting safety by investing in young people’s passions and neighborhoods. “In addition to directly engaging more community members, this project will pave the way for enhanced collaboration with other community organizations,” said Sonila Kada, the director of Staten Island Justice Center.
Residents of New York City’s public housing system are routinely forced to live without kitchen gas, electricity, and heat, sometimes for days or weeks on end. With support from the Red Hook Community Justice Center, some tenants of Brooklyn’s Red Hook Houses are seeking compensation—and a new bill sponsored by Assembly Member Marcela Mitaynes proposes to reduce tenant rent during utility outages.
“We don’t want to see people locked up as the solution. We want them to get the help they need, get the stability, get the path toward a healthy life.” Governor Kathy Hochul visited our Midtown Community Justice Center to share exciting news of a $33 million investment into expanded mental health support for New Yorkers in the criminal legal system. On NY1, hear from the people working on the ground to link people who have been arrested to those life-changing services, including Mel Hodor from our Midtown Community Justice Center team.
Website and Email Outage Resolved!
Our website and email experienced unexpected downtime from 7/10-7/12. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.