About Us
Why We’re Fighting
Everyone is talking about — The rapid gentrification of Brooklyn. Rents are going up, people are being displaced and small long-time mom and pop businesses are closing. Racial profiling and ticketing harassment due to Broken Windows policing grows worse every day.
Tenants, especially those who live in non-rent stabilized housing, homeowners and small business owners are at an unfair disadvantage because they do not have access to the same legal representation that landlords and developers do. And seems like the NYPD is above the law and can do whatever they want in our neighborhoods without impunity.
Help Us Change This !
Equality for Flatbush does affordable housing, anti-gentrification and police accountability organizing in Brooklyn. We’ve organized “No Eviction Zones” in 9 neighborhoods in Brooklyn — including Bedford-Stuyvesant/Clinton Hill, Bushwick, Crown Heights, East Flatbush, East New York, Flatbush, Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Sunset Park.
YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT IS CRUCIAL FOR GROWING OUR WORK IN 2018
In 2018, we want to take our organizing work to the next level by raising $20K for The E4F Rapid Response Legal Fund that will provide free legal services by trusted attorneys to tenants, homeowners, small businesses and people impacted by police violence across Brooklyn . We also want to be able to pay for the research, court costs, and legal fees required to hold more greedy landlords, developers and the NYPD accountable and stop the violence caused by gentrification.
Equality for Flatbush has only two goals – to end NYPD murders and to stop the displacement of low to middle income people from our community due to gentrification. Help us raise $20K for a The E4F Rapid Response Legal Fund so we can fight greedy landlords, developers and the NYPD
With Your HELP— #WEWILLWIN
Yours in struggle
Imani Henry, Founder and Lead Organizer for Equality for Flatbush
The Equality for Flatbush (E4F) Leadership Team
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.
Deborah Secular, Administrative and Office Team and Fundraising Committee, is an educator living in Brooklyn. Originally from Washington, DC, she moved to NYC in 2013 and to Brooklyn in 2017, when she joined E4F.
Dorla Alleyne, #OurHomesAreNotforSale Campaign Coordinator and Language Justice Team, is a Bed-stuy homeowner who has lived in Brooklyn for 47 years. Dorla is also an registered nurse who currently volunteers with The Emergency Medical Reserve Corps. In the past Dorla has volunteered with Neighborhood Housing Services in the Winsor Terrace and Kensington neighborhoods. Dorla is fluent in Spanish and has been working on E4F’s tenant organizing campaigns since January 2018.
Francesca Walker, E4F Website Administrator was born and raised in Flatbush. She is also a social justice educator and a crisis counselor and volunteers her time coaching people through trauma, towards their highest potential.
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.
Haley Schwartz, Administrative & Office Team and Social Media Team, is a clinical social worker who works in the area of Teen Dating Violence. She began volunteering with Equality for Flatbush in 2015, in response to the rapid displacement and targeting of long-time Flatbush residents. As a third generation Brooklynite, Haley believes in the importance of keeping the borough accessible for working folks, and especially Caribbean and Black folks.
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 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.
Pooja Patel, general Core Member, is a Consumer and Tenant lawyer. She has lived in Flatbush and has volunteered with E4F since 2016. Outside of her job and E4F, Pooja serves on the Executive Committee of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
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, Administrative Coordinator, East Flatbush Cop Watch Team/ PAW & B4G Organizer is a lifelong resident and East Flatbush native of 28 years. A 2012 graduate of the HBCU, Morehouse College and is currently a graduate student of Public Administration at the City University of New York.
A Call to Action from Equality for Flatbush (E4F) Lead Organizer, Imani Henry
Dear E4F/B4G/BAN Community
Thank you for ALL your tremendous activism, leadership and financial support in 2018! Our tiny grassroots organization could never built over 15 tenant associations, fight white supremacy and police violence in Brooklyn, produced over 75 videos, or keep small businesses on our blocks without all of the hard work of our 1500 + volunteers.
But due to the rapid increase of tenant harassment and police violence this year coupled with our lack of paid staff and grant funding , E4F has fallen behind administratively. As we have shared with you all this fall, E4F has accumulated a backlog of paralegal, investigative research, video-related, outreach, fundraising, etc tasks needed to support the numerous tenants , homeowners, small businesses and families impacted by police violence that are currently working within E4F. Our plan is to focus for the next 2 months on these tasks and plan strategies to take our current campaigns to the next level in 2019.
So from January 1st 2019 – March 1st 2019 E4F will be playing Organizational Catch-Up. This means:
- There will be NO NEW INTAKES : On average, E4F gets between 1-4 calls a day from community members facing harassment and displacement . E4F will not be taking any NEW affordable housing / anti-displacement intakes for the next 2 months in order to focus and catch up on backlog of tasks from our current campaigns . We will of course continue to make referrals to other trusted organizations and give as much assistance to people in crisis as we can but we will not have the capacity to launch new organizing or legal campaigns until March/April. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this causes community members who generally call us after they have exhausted more conventional resources.
- GET READY TO WORK: If you already are part of a legal case , tenant/homeowner/working group leader please expect there will be a strategy or planning session between January to March to catch up tasks and plan for next steps for 2019. In fact ALL E4F/BAN/B4G activists should expect more planning and strategy meetings during the winter and spring of 2019 . We really need your leadership and activism in order to step up the fight against police violence and gentrification.
- We urgently need OFFICE, administrative, fundraising , social media, video, etc VOLUNTEERS to help us catch on tasks. If you have even a few hours a month – in person or remotely to spare to take on a single task or coordinate an area of work that would be greatly appreciated. To volunteer contact: imani@equalityforflatbush.org or send a text to 646 820-6039 or Please feel free to Sign-up for an E4F working group: :https://goo.gl/forms/QLM1vPttvNojRnKk2
- We URGENTLY NEED FUNDS to pay our lawyers, buy organizational supplies and keep the lights on so we can continue to fight to stop police violence and gentrification in Brooklyn . (See all ways you can give below)
Again we thank you all for your continue activism and support . We look forward to being in the trenches with you in 2019!
Yours in struggle,
Imani Henry, Lead Organizer for Equality for Flatbush
Here are all the ways people can GIVE TO E4F:
E4F’s Rapid Response Legal Fund :
https://www.gofundme.com/e4f-rapid-response-legal-fund-2018 #E4Fsues
General Support :
https://beforeitsgone.co/donate or https://www.paypal.me/EqualityforFlatbush
VENMO: EqualityforFlatbush
Donate By Check:
Make out checks to “Equality for Flatbush” and mail to:
Equality for Flatbush
2273 Church Avenue POB #260123
Brooklyn, NY 11226
For Tax Exempt Donations:
Donate online at Picture The Homeless and designate your donation to Equality for Flatbush or make out checks to:
Picture the Homeless
MEMO:Equality for Flatbush
104 E 126th St #1B
New York, NY 10035
What We’re Facing
%
Percent Increase in Brooklyn Rents Since the Year 2000
$3421
The Average Rent for a One-Bedroom Apartment in Brooklyn
The Number of New NYPD Cops Added in 2016
How We Work
Under our three organizing areas; anti-police repression, affordable housing and anti-gentrification Equality for Flatbush has 12 active campaigns
* = Brooklyn-wide Campaign
** =City-wide Campaign
Anti-Police Repression Work is Coordinated by E4F’s Police Accountability Working Group
- NYPD Traffic Stop and Checkpoint Surveillance*
- Dollar Van and Cab Drivers Community Solidarity Campaign
- Community Patrol with East Flatbush Cop Watch Team
- Supporting the call for Justice for the families of Kimani Gray, Shantel Davis, Kyam Livingston, Akai Gurley, Delrawn Smalls and others who have endured police terror/murders**
- Flatbush/ East Flatbush Street Vendor Organizing in collaboration with The Street Vendor’s Project
- BEFORE IT’S GONE // TAKE IT BACK: Documenting Brooklyn – Fighting Gentrification is a Brooklyn-wide neighborhood and web-based response to the crisis of gentrification of Brooklyn, NY. www.beforeitsgone.co *
- Initiating organization of The Brooklyn Anti-gentrification Network (BAN) **
- Real Estate Watch is the E4F investigative Research Team that works to hold greedy landlords and developers accountable by providing information and tools to empower residents.**
- Participating organization of The Empire Boulevard Study Group. In coalition with Movement To Protect the People (MTOPP) and other groups against the up-zoning of Empire Blvd
- New Flatbush Resident Community Project
Ways You Can Help
1. DONATE TO EQUALITY FOR FLATBUSH
Make a secure donation online through PayPal. You do not need a PayPal account to proceed.
2. GET INVOLVED
Volunteers & Funds Needed:
From January 1st 2019 – March 1st 2019 E4F will be playing Organizational Catch-Up
Flatbush/East Flatbush Residents:
Join our TEXT Loop call or text: (646) 820-6039
OR add your email to The Equality for Flatbush Organizers and Members Organizing List : equality-for-flatbush-organizing-list@googlegroups.com
Brooklyn residents
Join The B4G Volunteers Gogglegroups:
Current E4F Working Groups/Teams to Join:
- Translation/Language Accessibility Team
- The Fundraising Committee
- Administrative & Office Team includes Graphic Designers & Artists
- Social Media & Online Outreach Team includes building the content for www.beforeitsgone.co
- B4G Organizers : focused on supporting Tenants, Small Businesses & Homeowners
- Real Estate Watch : Investigative Research and Resource Team
- B4G Tenant Harassment Documentation Team : for Videographers & Filmmaker
- League of Extraordinary Lawyers
To get involved with E4F: Email : flatbushequality@gmail.com or call /text (646) 820-6039
Job Opportunities with E4F:
Coming soon…
3. SHARE YOUR STORY DIGITALLY
BEFORE IT’S GONE / TAKE IT BACK:
Documenting Brooklyn – Fighting Gentrification
is a neighborhood and web-based response to the crisis of gentrification of Brooklyn, NY. Visit us online and share your stories:
Follow us on social media and share our petitions, campaigns, and updates:
GET HELP