Self-Determination – opportunity to be controllers of our own destiny and to define conditions from a perspective of our own social reality
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Organizing -- the process of developing relationships and working with people around a common set of interests and knowledge. Effective solutions are best developed when the people and communities most affected, most impacted by the conditions are placed at the forefront. People power determines how to solve social issues or address material needs.
Organizers - co-create the vehicles (structures, mobilizations, programs, events, training's, curriculum's, etc..) of liberation and healing through the structures needed to carry out democratically agreed upon strategies and tactics of actions. Organizers should know they are part of the solution as well as the problem. Organizers live for the day they're not needed.
Organic Strategy
Traditional planning is very “mechanistic” and/or “linear” i.e. they’re rather general-to specific or cause-and-effect in nature. We decided to grow like an organism, i.e. an “organic” self-organizing process. We let things flow by unfolding in its own ways for the last three years in order to evaluate for this year. A lot of fucked up things happened i.e a lot of the ism’s (heterosexism, ageism, sexism, classism etc…) both internal and external played out and at the same time beautiful things transpired friendships, strengths, love, joy, and moments stability and sustainability, community etc…. Organic organizing required lots of continual reference to the above values mentioned and a continued shared reflection around how things were functioning. Everyone comes in with different meanings to words and we had to meet each other some where in a common space.
General steps included: Constant check-ins, meetings, workshops, referrals, dialogues, events and dinners. We consistently went over the vision of looking at the intersections of the ism’s both internally and externally or at least tried. We had to remind ourselves that organic organizing is never really “over with.” And that the group needed to learn to conduct its own values clarification, dialogue/reflection, and process updates. Individuals had to be patient and learn to be still with process and not be so action orientated. We always reminded ourselves to focus on healthier ways of being and learning.
Decolonization
Degrowth Festival:
The DEGROWTH FEST allows us to bring communities together, unified in our belief in the preservation of the Earth for generations to come. This FEST ​aims to raise awareness of the imminent dangers that we face if we continue to ignore the limitations of Earth's resources. Through the power of music, art, fashion, and consciously-aware artists the DEGROWTH FEST will reach the masses with the message of Unity and the hope for a more sustainable and just society. We are bringing you a zero waste zone, welcome to all accessible to everyone! Come Join us at THE AWAKENING!
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Writer Training Sessions with Women's Press Collective: Expanding on community based media and telling the story from a grassoots lens.Working people all over NYC have stories to tell, life lessons to teach, experiences and observations to share, and a desire to make positive improvements for themselves and the people around them. Teaming up with the Women's Press Collective hosted a training series for community members so that all people have acces to skills and resources to create independent media. They are a non profit organization that helps working communities across our country and in New York City, women leaders are organizing independent, community based media, giving voice to the struggles of working women.
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FTP Emergency Actions:
Sanctuary Space
Sweat Equity?
Safari Land And Institutional Accountability
Sept 7th Beyond Kanders: Decolonizing the Museums, Decolonizing City
Dcolonization Commission Safariland
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Green Gems
August 31st Langston Hughes Jesse B Simple Alive In Harlem
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Sept 21st Wedding
Brooklyn March Against GRD
Community Life Market Place
Sept 2nd Labor Day BBQ and Dance Party Camera Ready Kutz
Thomas Otwell Dover Delaware
September 7th, 2019 Dance if You love Brooklyn
August 24th Nicholas Hayward Remembrence and Homage to Nicholoas Sr and Jr
Residents for the Year Sections Displacement/Gentrification
6.29 Open House
6.13 Community Life Market Place
Pop Up Father Day BBQ
June 20th -23rd Degrowth Festival
May 30th ( weeks of Action
May 26th Pop up Rock Soup BBQ
May 19th Brookly Light House Egungun Festival May 19th
March 23rd Y2Slay
Fire
Militariz
Militarization:
Brooklyn Defense Committee Sanctuary Program coming together to address the violence of deportation affects our loved ones and communities “Sanctuary Spots” a place of refuge and resources for people threatened by deportaion and ICE
We built these cities and have the universal right to direct growth, remain and return to our cities freely, controlling our streets and communities while ensuring our institutions exist to serve people rather than predatory capital interest.
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At present, our housing "options" are mostly subjected to the restrictions of absentee landlords, corrupt financial institutions and real estate developers that utilize a militarized police force to keep us in "our" place and target/rob us of integrity, dignity, homes and overall sustainability. The market rate for housing creates conditions that make us constantly struggle to stay in and navigate through NYC; much less find the time and energy to find living spaces to organize ourselves and our surrounding communities.
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Making sure we have the space Free your mind from your own limitations What we can do taking control Supporting are own
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We want to stop the discrimination of attaining sustainable and low-cost housing whether renting or buying
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base their transformative approach on Paolo Freire’s notions of engaging people in ways that empower them and bring about social change. The Freirian dialogue among people rejects the “banking” approach to development, in which the professional is the supposed repository of technical knowledge about planning and transfers
it to “students” who must listen and learn.
theories of transformative planning help explain how new generations of effective community planners emerge without formal training as they “learn by doing” and by engaging in dialogues with the people who can help them to solve their community’s problems and bring about radical social change we take charge of community land is land taken out of the speculative real estate market
FREE THE LAND
COMMUNITY CONTROL OF LAND USE AND DEVELOPMENT
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The real estate and financial forces of displacement/gentrification, police violence and white supremacy continuously rob us of our neighborhoods, homes, integrity and dignity. Many Individuals and families in our communities internalize these systemic conditions into self-blame, doubt, fatalism, and hate for one another that is purposely designed to drive us out of urban areas and apart from one another.
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The term [displacement] describes what happens when forces outside the household make living there impossible, or hazardous, or unaffordable. The fact of
displacement is a grotesque and spreading feature of life for lower-income people
in the United States. It also means a process by which they are engineered out
of their traditional neighborhoods, to make way for new occupants deemed more
“desirable” because of the color of their skins, the taxes they will pay, or the
“life style” they lead
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Crisis a consequence of a highly financialized economy.The deregulation of financial marketsthe Bill Clinton era decision to shield what’s known as “over the counter” (OTC) derivatives from regulation recession that followed ravaged public tax bases, leading to revenue crises for our cities, counties and states, along with austerity policies as governments struggled to balance budgets. Though the overall economy has recovered from the recession, many governments still face structural revenue deficits. Revenue crises and austerity policies lead to deteriorating infrastructure, a shriveling social safety net, and massive cuts to essential public services—particularly in poor communities of color. Governments facing revenue crises must resort to borrowing money to close budget gaps and can become vulnerable to predatory lending schemes that banks may offer
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Housing policy should be driven by housing needs, not investor profit. Yet, time and again, we see housing policies shaped by a stubborn faith in the private market.
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Folks know dam well what happens when you leave communities to their own self determination.
Housing is an anchor for a stable, prosperous, and just society. A vision for genuine housing security.
Housing as a right rather than as a commodity. Housing security interrelated concerns
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AFFORDABILITY: Housing needs to be affordable relative to household income and other reasonable expenses.
ACCESSIBILITY: Housing should be made accessible to historically marginalized populations, and it should be wellintegrated socially and geographically.
LONG-TERM STABILITY AND PROTECTION FROM DISPLACEMENT: People’s homes need to be protected from market forces causing displacement and changes in government policy over the long term.
HEALTH, SUSTAINABILITY, AND QUALITY: Housing should contribute to individual, family, community, and planetary health.
COMMUNITY CONTROL: Housing and land should be controlled through democratic structures and processes.
Adults between the ages of 24 and 35, for example, are experiencing greater poverty than previous generations and are more likely today to languish for years in low-wage work and be saddled with debt Long term stability and protection from displacement.
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Policies ensuring long-term stability and security of tenure must be a part of any meaningful housing reform agenda. The past three decades have seen low-income communities across the country ravaged by rising housing costs and the return of more affluent populations to city centers. The result has been widespread displacement on a scale not seen since the days of urban renewal. At the same time, tenant protections have largely evaporated — and many local governments, eager to curry favor with developers, have turned their backs on their low-income constituents. The market collapse exacerbated the situation, as many foreclosed properties housed renters.
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Federal policy has also slashed the supply of affordable housing, through a combination of neglect and as the explicit outcome of policy. Public housing, which was neglected for decades even as it provided the only real affordable housing for very low-income residents, has been demolished at an unprecedented rate across the country through the HOPE VI program. This has contributed to a massive net loss of housing for very low-income residents, most of whom now have to compete for housing in the private market
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Even if housing is affordable for tenants, housing stability can still be a source of day-to-day and longer-term insecurity. For too many low-income tenants, being renters means living in constant fear of eviction or gentrification-induced displacement, even if their home is affordable at any given moment.
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This is one of the reasons are struggles exisit. Housing taken off the speculative markets.The Crystal House Model is living. It grows and in conversation with itself and its members on a daily basis. The following components represent the progress of the political, economic, social, cultural, emotional and environmental climate on micro levels (self, partnerships, goals, values, traumas) and macro levels (weather, policy, community trends/ narratives, movement, global waves/ energy). Within our movement for self-determination, human rights and national/ total libration there exist both the art and the science of revolutionary processes. The Crystal House Model incorporates both; and intentionally creates space to put both in conversation through dialectical analysis, reflection, deconstruction and healing.
We must act as if we answer to, and only answer to, our Ancestors, our Children, and the Unborn. ---Amilcar Cabral