JEWS FOR RACIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
330 Seventh Avenue 1901, NEW YORK, NY 10001 www.jfrej.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: For almost 30 years, Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) has pursued racial and economic justice in New York City by advancing systemic changes that result in concrete improvements in peoples everyday lives. What began in 1990 as a small group of progressive Jewish New Yorkers has grown into one of the strongest and most effective grassroots organizations in the country. JFREJ is built around a powerful vision and strategy for organizing, bringing a feminist, intersectional lens to a robust, member-led model of base-building and campaign development. We are inspired by Jewish tradition to fight for a sustainable world with an equitable distribution of economic and cultural resources and political power. The movement to dismantle racism and economic exploitation will be led by those most directly targeted by oppression and we believe that Jews have a vital role to play in this movement. In long-term partnership with grassroots groups across the city, JFREJ has championed the wome

Neighbors Beyond Amazon/No Tech For ICESince the landmark victory on February 14th, 2019, when Amazon announced that they were pulling out of their plans to build a new headquarters in Long Island City, the No Amazon coalition continued to meet and build on our historic success. Now under the banner of Neighbors Beyond Amazon, the coalition, which includes many of the most progressive and powerful grassroots organizations across NYC, was poised to spring into action to raise awareness of the Amazons (and specifically Amazon Web Services) role in the detention of immigrants at the border and in our cities. In coalition with our partners at Mijente, Make the Road, and New York Communities for Change, we have mobilized our members to show up at actions targeting Palantir Tech, whose technology services such as facial recognition software are used by ICE to track immigrants. Additionally, our members have been involved in the decentralized Never Again Action movement made up of Jews of all ages drawing the connection between the detention centers ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are holding people at the border and in our cities and the concentration camps many of our ancestors were contained in. This movement moment has struck a chord for many Jews in our community and weve seen an increase in engagement and desire to participate in our organizing because of the inspiring actions happening nationally that are targeting ICE detention centers. In the past two action nights, weve trained and engaged over 70 people and over 40 people respectively. Hate Violence Prevention InitiativeIn the winter, JFREJ and the New York Anti-Violence Project (AVP) convened the Hate Violence Prevention Initiative (HVPI) in response to skyrocketing hate violence in New York City. The coalition will provide services and organizing in all five boroughs, and includes Jewish, immigrant, Latinx, Muslim, Arab & South Asian, Black, and LGBTQGNC populations. For the first time, a diverse coalition of community-based organizations will coordinate their responses to incidents of hate violence in New York City. The diverse HVPI coalition includes all of the communities most directly impacted by hate violence and brings together nine community organizations working citywide to address this issue. We realized we need approaches that prevent violence through education and community-building, interrupt violence through community-based upstander/bystander trainings and rapid response at the local level, and repair damage through restorative justice, counseling, and peer-support. The HVPI coalition believes that our communities should be at the center of generating these solutions, and that an agenda that relies on increased policing and escalating hate crimes prosecutions will not heal our communities and will not stop hate violence in New York City.HVPI coalition members have identified five key strategies (Preventative Education, Reporting, Community Care, Rapid Response, and Narrative Shift) that are critical to hate violence prevention in New York. Each organization will focus on the modalities that reflect its core competencies and the coalition will serve as an incubator of ideas and practices, in which we will all learn from and support each other. Because of the diversity and size of our coalition, our capacities will be unevenly distributed but collectively we will provide a potent combination of services to the communities most directly impacted by hate violence. In this first year of the initiative, we will collect data to better assess overall program capacity, community need, effectiveness, and best practices. After multiple press conferences, flyering, a letter written and signed by over fifty rabbis and influential Jewish community leaders, and a petition signed by over 400 people, the city awarded $1 million dollars to the initiative in the most recent budget. Collectively, the nine organizations (see partnership development section for full list) of the Hate Violence Prevention Initiative form a carefully woven tapestry that is uniquely capable of building inter-communal understanding, solidarity, and security, across difference, for the most directly impacted populations of New York City. Creating a Feminist Economy with a Caring MajorityJFREJ plays an anchor role in New York Campaign for a Caring Majority - a coalition of key organizations representing seniors, people with disabilities, family caregivers, home care workers, and providers - continues to influence politics and the narrative around healthcare and aging with dignity in New York City and nationally. Participating organizations include Hand in Hand, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, and the National Employment Law Center. The coalition then works with other key players in the sector, such as SEIU 11199 and AARP New York. Together, this coalition has gathered data on the experiences of elders waiting for support through the Expanded In-home Services to the Elderly and advocated for sustained and increased funding to the program. An example of recent success is our Director of Organizing Rachel McCullough being featured on the Laura Flanders Show to discuss our Caring Majority work and imagine a future where all people can age and live with dignity in New York City, not just the young and able-bodied. Purim Party and CarnivalsThis year we hosted our biggest Purimshpil yet with over 1,000 people in attendance. In partnership with the Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee and Great Small Works, our Purimshpil is consistently one of our biggest events. We sang and danced in celebration of Jews and our legacies of resistance to injustice we created space explicitly for joy and resilience. Scores of artists, activists, and volunteers created and performed the shpil building sets, sewing costumes, and writing scripts. This year we had two family carnivals, one in Queens and one in Brooklyn. At both Carnivals, kids of many ages celebrated the win against Amazon and envisioned democratic economic development for the New York City of our dreams.Mimouna Mizrahi and Sephardi members of JFREJs Mizrahi caucus planned JFREJs first-ever leftist Mimouna in April. Mimouna is a holiday that comes from Moroccan and other North African Jewish communities, beginning the night Passover ends, marking the return of chametz (leavened food) back into our homes. Many Jews who lived in Muslim-majority countries for centuries would open their homes to everyone on the block in honor of the holidayincluding their Muslim neighborsand quickly make mofletta pancakes with flour after sundown, sing and dance to Arabic songs and be together with neighbors and family in joyous celebration. We celebrated alongside 400 members of our community, including our long-time partners at the Arab American Association of New York and Desis Rising Up and Moving, in our fights against Trumps Muslim Ban, the NYPDs discriminatory surveillance of Muslim communities, and the rising tide of white nationalist hate violence. It was an evening that can only be described by sheer abundance: an abundance of people; an abundance of sweet desserts; an abundance of joy, of solidarity, of livelihood, of connection; and an abundance of firmly rooted Jewish culture and ritual alongside our beloved Arab, Muslim, and South Asian neighbors in the diaspora. A Muslim leader at the New York Immigrant Coalition who attended Mimouna wrote in his donation note to us, I am giving because I love you all and the work you do. In the most challenging times of my adult life, Ive seen you always by my side. As folks arrived just before sundownonly hours after the devastating shooting at the Chabad synagogue in Powaywe opened the evening with our Arab and Muslim family at AAANY by marking Mimouna as an act of joyful solidarity and resistance against the rise of authoritarianism and ethnic nationalism that seeks to divide and destroy our communities.Hannah Goldman, a member of the Mimouna planning team and a Moroccan member of the Mizrahi and Sephardi caucus said of the event, the rich culture and history of Moroccan Jews have so often been erased, mocked, and appropriated...As a Moroccan artist and cultural organizer, it feels incredibly exciting and healing to gather the community in service of honoring and uplifting Moroccan rituals, while forging new blueprints for intersectional Mizrahi art making.JuneteenthFollowing our first Juneteenth Seder in 2018 that was a community wide event, the Jews of Color Caucus held a 2019 Juneteenth Seder just for Black Jews and other non-Jewish Black organizers, activists, family, and friends. Hosted at the JCC Harlem, it was a lovely event with delicious food and beautiful music performed by caucus members, and over forty people joined in the celebration.Antisemitism TeamOur antisemitism team has developed, piloted, and continues to provide in-depth antisemitism trainings. The team is inte

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