Meet the Equality for Flatbush (E4F) Staff

Ariella Riapos, Administrative Coordinator, is a 22 year old Latina activist originally from Jersey City, currently living and building community in Bushwick. She’s the founder and lead organizer of G-REBLS, a grassroots org dedicated to building solidarity among Black and Brown communities. She is a recent graduate of Pace University and after coming forward with her own #MeToo story senior year, she and members of PaceUEndRape organized a walkout for women and femmes to force the administration to meet student demands for policy changes within Title IX and stronger protections for survivors of assault and intimate partner violence on campus. After graduation she joined E4F to help build a people’s movement through solidarity and direct action.

Imani Keith Henry, Executive Director & Lead Organizer  is a longtime activist in the anti-police brutality, anti-war and LGBTQ movements in the US. In 2013, Imani founded​ ​The Equality for Flatbush Project (E4F)​. Imani has a Masters in Social Work from New York University Silver School of Social Work and a Masters in Public Administration from The Wagner School of Public Service. Under the brand,​ ​OD For the People​, Imani is an Organizational Development Consultant and Diversity Trainer who provides change management services specifically for nonprofits and universities.

Kafele Thomas, Fundraising Consultant, was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He is a graduate of Seton Hall University and a current student at The New School. He has been working in development and fundraising for over 9 years with an expertise in institutional funding.

Noah Wolf, Facilities Manager,  is an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist community organizer interested in building cooperative communities, creating music, and baking bread.

Sophia Dalal, Legal Services Coordinator, has fought evictions, deportations, police brutality, and sexual assault in her hometown of San Francisco and now in Bushwick, where she currently lives. Sophia is a graduate of Brown University, where she worked as a legal advocate for undocumented survivors of domestic violence and documented stories of her San Francisco neighbors facing eviction.

Meet the Equality for Flatbush (E4F) Leadership

Abdula Greene, Police Accountability Working Group (PAW) , is a former Brooklyn Prosecutor, who is now in private practice as a criminal defense and family law attorney. She is a lifelong Flatbush resident who has worked with Equality for Flatbush since 2014.

Amanda Trainor, Administrative & Office Team  & Language Justice Team, joined E4F in 2016 after moving to Brooklyn in 2013. She is a textile artist currently involved in labor activism and the worker cooperative movement in New York City.

Bruno Daniel, B4G Organizer & Flatbush/ East Flatbush Street Vendor Organizing member, immigrated to Brooklyn from Mexico City as a child and has since lived in Brooklyn for 28 years. He is a community organizer currently involved in the Bushwick anti-gentrification movement.
Caroline Friedman, Small Business Legal Coordinator,  is a worker-side labor attorney and protest legal observer.

Chris Black, Police Accountability Working Group and New Flatbush Resident Community Project Member, is a 2nd grade teacher in Manhattan. Originally from Texas, he moved to NYC in 2007 and has lived in Brooklyn since 2013.

Colin Kinniburgh, Co-Coordinator, Real Estate Watch & Member of the Administrative & Office Team, is a lifelong New Yorker and a resident of Flatbush since 2014. An editor at Dissent magazine by day, he has been active in a variety of housing, climate, and economic justice groups for the last five years.

Daliah Hellier, Fundraising Committee, is a policy researcher and consultant on public health issues related to social policy, including incarceration, drug use, and homelessness. She has been a resident of Brooklyn since 1994, and relocated to Flatbush in 2014 when she was priced out of Fort Greene, where she had lived for 16 years.

Francesca Walker,  E4F Website Administrator is a lifelong resident of Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Gretchen Begley, Language Justice Working Group Coordinator & Member of the Flatbush/ East Flatbush Street Vendor organizing campaign , is a Spanish-English interpreter and translator, as well as social worker, who is currently focusing her activism on language justice. She has lived between Brooklyn and Queens since 2005.

Judy Jones, E4F Tenant Leader,  is a Registered Nurse and resident of Flatbush section of Brooklyn for 37 years. She is the Tenant Leader for three buildings located on Westbury Court, off Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn, NY.

Katie Hydell,  B4G Bushwick Organizer & Administrative & Office Team, grew up in Island Park, Long Island. Her family is from Brooklyn and Queens. She joined E4F in 2014 after moving back to Brooklyn after living in Colorado for 6 years and realized that it was no longer affordable for working class people. Katie is a public middle school teacher in the Lower East Side is who watching many of her students’ families struggling with displacement and unstable housing as gentrification is now making it’s way south of Delancey.

Michael “Ziggy” Mintz, Co-Coordinator Real Estate Watch is a self-taught computer programer, who works on LittleSis.org. In 2014, with other community organizers, he helped launch the Bushwick Community Map, and continues to regularly do data analysis and research for grassroots organizations, lawyers, and non-profits.  He used to live in Brooklyn, before moving to Jackson Heights, Queens, a few years ago.

Nadeem Gibran Salaam, E4F Video Strike Force, is a native New Yorker born in Flatbush and raised in Park Slope/Long Island. His father, a Pakistani Muslim, raised three children on an MTA salary and his mother an Indian Christian, provided an early example of bucking traditions. As a musician and poet he took refuge on the Lower East Side performing at venues like CBGB’s absorbing punk and politics of radical anti-capitalists. After leaving a manual labor job at JFK Airport, he founded a company called Elevtr, documenting and reporting for grassroots movements from the anti-war left during Bush’s admin to Occupy & DAPL serving as a new member of E4F.   

Pooja Patel, Real Estate Watch, is a Flatbush resident and an eviction defense lawyer, who has been involved with E4F since September of 2016. She is originally from New Jersey and is the child of two South Asian immigrants.  Pooja joined E4F because it is an organization committed to centering people of color while building people power to resist gentrification and police violence, two issues that must be fought together. Outside of her job and E4F, Pooja serves on the Executive Committee of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and she is involved in (re-)building the cooperative movement in New Jersey.

Soraya Palmer, E4F Organizer & New Flatbush Resident Community Project Coordinator, was born and raised in Flatbush. She loves her Caribbean people as well as the youth of Brooklyn that she works with everyday.

Tom Knight, E4F Video Strike Force,moved to New York City in 2010 to study film at the School of Visual Arts. He has been documenting tenant harassment since February 2017.

Uliya Yashtala,  East Flatbush Cop Watch Team/PAW,  Spanish Hotline Coordinator, moved to East Flatbush in Fall 2013 and joined Equality for Flatbush and the East Flatbush Cop Watch Team in an effort to give back to the community and fight back against displacement and racist violence.

Victor Moses, East Flatbush Cop Watch Team/ PAW & B4G Organizer, is a lifelong resident and East Flatbush native of 27 years. A 2012 graduate of the HBCU, Morehouse College and is currently a graduate student of Public Administration at the City College of New York.