NYS Community Equity Agenda Statement In Solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives.

June 10, 2020

The NYS Community Equity Agenda coalition stands in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives and all those taking to the streets against systemic racism and police brutality. We demand justice for Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Jamel Floyd, and so many other Black Americans who have been murdered by the police and white supremacists.

Our coalition of more than 35 organizations fights for a New York in which all communities thrive through democratic control of land, housing, finance, and economic development. None of that is possible as long as the health and safety of Black, Brown, and Indigenous New Yorkers are continually threatened by violence.

We applaud the passage of major police reform bills in Albany, including the repeal of New York’s police secrecy law, 50-a, as steps toward greater safety for New Yorkers, especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous New Yorkers. We also know that more fundamental change is needed.

Our state and country have a reprehensible history of systemic anti-Blackness, racism, and violence — from slavery and Jim Crow to the persistence of redlining and predatory finance, wealth extraction, the prison industrial complex, workplace exploitation, rampant displacement and homelessness, and more.

Our coalition pledges to continue fighting for transformational change in New York, centering leadership from Black, Brown and Indigenous communities. New York must divest from institutions that exploit people and that extract wealth, power, and control from communities, and invest in an economy rooted in justice, sustainability, and cooperation.

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