Brooklyn Housing Advocates Join "March on Mayors" in Miami
Tuesday July 08, 2008 | New York City
About 20 people from Brooklyn —members of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), Make the Road NY, Pratt Center for Community Development and the AIDS Housing Network— joined with dozens from Manhattan to travel to Miami where a national meeting of mayors was taking place and protest the lack of affordable housing and gentrification in cities across the nation.
The June 20 March on Mayors was sponsored by the Right to the City Alliance (RTTC), a national organization which serves as an umbrella for such campaigns aimed at community control of not only affordable housing, but zoning, public space and economic development. The goal of this march was to call on the nation’s mayors to address the effects of gentrification on low-income and working class communities of color.
“New Yorkers came to Miami this week to urge Mayor Bloomberg and all the nation’s local leaders to pay closer attention to the way gentrification is pushing out low-income and working class communities of color — in New York City and all our urban centers,” said Laine Romero-Alston of the Urban Justice Center.
Added Randy Leigh, a FUREE board member, “The Right to the City March on Mayors is an historic mobilization of residents from across the country who believe we have a right to the city that includes access to affordable housing, public space and economic and environmental fairness.”
Other march participants from New York City came from the following groups: CAAAV/Chinatown Tenants Union, FIERCE, Good Old Lower East Side, Community Voices Heard, WeACT, Urban Justice Center, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Picture the Homeless.