Our Mission

MISSION: The Black Freedom Project [BFP] will build the infrastructure needed for Black-led and Black-centered, base-building organizations across New York State. BFP will serve as a vehicle for the expansion of organizing capacity that will enable New York State-level Movement for Black Lives [M4BL] formations to collectively advance a statewide organizing agenda and dismantle systems and policies that create barriers to thriving communities.

STAFF / STEERING COMMITTEE

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Staff: Shatia (Tia) Strother – Black Freedom Projects’s (BFP) Project Manager
Brooklyn Movement Center [BMC] 
– Mark Winston Griffith | Anthonine Pierre

Brooklyn Movement Center (BMC) is a Black-led, membership-based organization of primarily low-to-moderate income Central Brooklyn residents. We build power and pursue self-determination in Bedford-Stuyvesant & Crown Heights by nurturing local leadership, waging campaigns and winning concrete improvements in people’s lives. Through our intersectional organizing, BMC centers a full range of issues and Black identity that define a whole community.

Law 4 Black Lives [L4BL] 
– Marbre Stahly-Butts |Lorenzo Bradford

Law For Black Lives is a Black femme-led national network of over 6,000 radical lawyers & legal workers. They are deeply committed to supporting the leadership of directly impacted communities and transforming the legal field to represent the values of movement lawyering, which are centered in building community power & democratizing the law.

 

Community Voices Heard [CVH] 
– Juanita Lewis

Community Voices Heard (CVH) is a member-led, multi-racial organization principally comprised of women of color and low-income families in New York State. CVH tackles tough issues and builds power to secure racial, social and economic justice for all New Yorkers. Through grassroots organizing, leadership development, policy changes, and creating new models of direct democracy CVH is creating a truly equitable New York State.

Black Loves Resists in the Rust [BLRR] 
– Phylicia Brown
BLRR develops Black and POC leadership to build a grounded and independent radical left, and develop home spaces in order to enable more organizers of color throughout the City of Buffalo. BLRR is a member-led, abolitionist organization of Black folk and POC that believe – through leadership development, a shared politic, and community organizing – we will build safe and flourishing communities that resist the ills of white supremacist, cis-heteropatriarchal, capitalism; including policing. We ground our work in these four pillars: Transformative Organizing, Healing Justice, Embodied Leadership and Political Education.
Releasing Aging People in Prison [RAPP] 
– Jose Saldana | TeAna Taylor

The Release Aging People in Prison/RAPP Campaign is a grassroots advocacy organization created & led by formerly incarcerated people and family members of people in prison. They work to end mass incarceration & promote racial justice through the release of aging people in prison & those serving long sentences. They work to dismantle the racist policies of mass incarceration by expanding the use of parole, compassionate release, clemency, and other forms of release in New York State. They work with other organizations across the country to end life imprisonment in the United States.

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement [MXGM] 
– Lumumba Bandele | Sala Cyril

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is an organization of Afrikans in America/New Afrikans whose mission is to defend the human rights of our people and promote self-determination in our community. They understand that the collective institutions of white-supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism have been at the root of our people’s oppression. They understand that without community control and without the power to determine our own lives, we will continue to fall victim to genocide. Therefore, they seek to heighten our consciousness about self-determination as a human right and a solution to our colonization. While organizing around their principles of unity, they are building a network of Black/New Afrikan activists and organizers committed to the protracted struggle for the liberation of the New Afrikan Nation – By Any Means Necessary!

Get involved with Black Freedom Project!