Civil Rights Campaign Achievements

♥ Held direct actions, press conferences and engaged in civil disobedience to reclaim our right to public spaces that have successfully resulted in a decrease in illegal police harassment and educated the general public
♥ Surveyed over 500 homeless New Yorkers in the summer of 2002 to document incidences of selective enforcement by the NYPD – developing the research and documentation skills of civil rights committee leaders who developed the survey instrument, conducted the surveys and compiled and analyzed the data resulting in our groundbreaking report
♥ Self published a report, Pattern and Practice: Systemic Violations of the Civil Rights of Homeless New Yorkers by the NYPD
♥ Won a major victory against the NYPD in federal court resulting in a the issuance of a groundbreaking policy directive against selective enforcement of the law
♥ Moved the faith community, social service providers, the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), the NYPD and the social justice community to collaborate on a plan to ensure that homeless New Yorkers in the vicinity of Madison Square Garden have access to life sustaining services during the RNC
♥ Secured extended hours for the general delivery Post Office (across from Madison Square Garden) to ensure that homeless and poor New Yorkers could pick up their checks on September 1, 2004 during the RNC
♥ Forced the New York State Division of Parole to rescind an illegal order barring parolees from entering Manhattan (unless they were employed in Manhattan) and even if they were employed were barred from The Red Zone between 8/30/04 thru 9/3/04 during the RNC!
♥ Developed outreach and educational materials for homeless New Yorkers, including our Know Your Rights pamphlet detailing the specifics of the laws and rules and regulations most frequently used by the NYPD, MTA and parks police against homeless New Yorkers – researched and written my civil rights committee members
♥ Provided trainings to ally groups, places of worship, public schools, institutions of higher learning and local and national conferences on homeless peoples civil rights including Brooklyn Law School, Queers for Economic Justice, the National Coalition for the Homeless, the NYC Social Forum, Hunter College, NYU and Union Theological Seminary among others
♥ Developed innovative public education materials, such as Myth and Reality link and created theatrical skits to illustrate civil rights abuses by the police
♥ Moved the broader social justice movement to include the civil rights agenda of homeless New Yorkers as part of the broader movement, including the Still We Rise Still Coalition and the Unlock the Block Coalition
♥ Launched a Civic Participation Project to ensure homeless peoples right to vote and provided voting rights teach-ins to hundreds of homeless New Yorkers
♥ Ensured that the voting rights of residents of Camp LaGuardia were protected by delivering 250 absentee voter ballots (we had demanded more!) to this upstate shelter where Camp residents still registered as voters in NYC are not provided with sufficient transportation on election day to vote in their communities
♥ Developed allies in the faith community, legal and advocacy community as well as tenants rights groups and grass roots social justice and civil rights organizations locally and nationally
♥ Incubated other successful Picture the Homeless campaigns, such as the Economic Justice/Canners campaign and the Potters Field campaign
♥ Provided the resources for homeless New Yorkers, the majority of who sleep in public spaces, to collectively pool our knowledge of the criminal injustice system to fight for civil justice and human rights
♥ Launched a Civil Rights Project in 2002 to document civil rights violations by the NYPD and Parks police. This project included the only free legal clinic for homeless people to fight unconstitutional police harassment in partnership with NYC Police Watch – linking the targeting of homeless New Yorkers to the broader civil rights movement around issues such as racial profiling
♥ Provide resources and technical assistance to other organizations around homeless civil rights