Dear Lucas,
January 1, 2014 marks the dawn of a new day in New York City. We have the opportunity to build a New York where the voices of tenants will not be drowned out by the money of developers, where the voices of parents won't be silenced by the politically connected operators of for-profit charter schools, where workers will not by threatened by retaliation, where the big banks will treated as a part of this city not the owners of it -- a New York that works for all of us. But building that New York is going to take a lot of hard work.
NYCC members have spent years organizing to get us to this moment, and now that it's here, we're prepared to work even harder. But we need you to support us. Can you chip in $15 dollar to support the Jon Kest Strategic Action Legacy Fund?
Named after NYCC's late founder,the goal of the Jon Kest Strategic Action Legacy Fund is to train new leaders and organizers to continue to run the innovative and deeply rooted community campaigns that NYCC is known for. The kind of campaigns that helped us get to this moment.
Since 2010, NYCC members have organized around housing, jobs and education. We knew that if we put our issues at the core of the conversation about the future of New York, and if we called out the inequality and unfairness that are hallmarks of the Bloomberg administration's approach to policies that affect working families, then we could pave the road for new leadership in New York in 2013.
But having leaders that are on our side is only one piece of the solution; next year we need to raise our voices louder than ever and make sure that the people we elected to represent our communities can hear us. We need to recruit and train new leaders to our neighborhood chapters and campaigns. We need to grow our organization and take our fight to Albany.And we need your help. Can you pitch in $15 dollars to the Jon Kest Strategic Action Legacy Fund?
After years of fighting, we are finally winning. But we can't stop now. I hope you'll join me in supporting NYCC so that we can hit the ground running in 2014 and do the work to build a New York that works for all of us.
Thank you for your continued support of our work!
Jonathan Westin
Executive Director
New York Communities for Change.