5 Year Climate Action Report

Since 2017, New York Communities for Change has built hard-hitting multi-racial campaigns to win transformational results. In large part, our climate-focused work began in response to the devastation that Superstorm Sandy wrecked on our membership. NYCC attacks the linked crises of inequality and climate change. In order to win, we combine our base in low-income communities of color with the predominantly white progressives who are active on climate to bring powerful pressure on specific governmental and corporate decision makers for major results.

It’s been an extremely successful run.

We’re showing a viable path to large-scale change in the real world, not just in a magazine article, foundation grant application or blog post. This report introduces NYCC and our climate work in the five years from 2017 - 2022.

We’ve included accounts of our highest-impact winning climate campaigns: NYC pension divestment; enacting Local Law 97; stopping the Williams NESE pipeline; cracking BlackRock; removing Lee Raymond from the JP Morgan Chase board; and stopping new fracked gas power plants, all won alongside allies. This report also includes a detailed write-up of our successful effort in 2021 to win NYC’s ban on gas in new construction. These are campaigns that, alongside allies, walked the talk.

NYCC is beginning to be recognized more widely for climate action. Bill McKibben said “I can tell you there’s no place in the world that organizes like NYCC” (we’re blushing) and City & State Magazine ranked our staff 11th out of 100 in their “Energy Power Ranking” in New York State.

Nothing we’re doing in New York isn’t “replicable” in other places. Other organizations also show this path. It is our hope that activists, foundation funders, donors, and leaders take a close look - and make it happen. And of course we hope this report helps highlight our organization, too.

We firmly believe that technology and well-intentioned, savvy insiders wielding their connections and technical knowledge are not the primary means to winning the right policies. Yet right now, that’s where almost all the money for climate action goes. Only a tiny sliver of cash supports organizing and base-building, despite a huge “bang for the buck” of effective mobilization work, like NYCC undertakes.

We’re proud of these five years of work, but we’ll confess: we’re extremely nervous. As the climate clock ticks down, we need to win ever larger efforts in the face of lengthening odds. We want to help stave off global climate catastrophe and make society more fair and just.

This isn’t easy (to put it mildly).

Nonetheless, we know that recruiting, building and activating a multi-racial base for transformational results is the best path forward to fight the climate crisis and inequality. Join us.

Sincerely,

Olivia Leirer Marie Pierre Lucas Sanchez Pete Sikora Co-Director Board Chair Co-Director Climate & Inequality Campaigns Director

Table of Contents

Five Years By the Numbers

2,582 NYCC Members attending climate campaign events

272 Events organized or co-organized by NYCC on climate

$250,000,000,000 Total value of the NYC pension funds, which are divesting

447 Media “hits” in online print media where members or staff are quoted or cited

6 Million Estimated avoided annual metric tons of climateheating pollution by stopping the Williams pipeline

$8,000,000,000,000 Estimated total value of BlackRock’s investments

3 Million

Total twitter impressions from recent protests in the Hamptons

42 Total national & international major media headlines as NYC enacted a gas ban on new construction

250 Million Weekly listeners to the BBC World Service, the largest media outlet to interview NYCC as NYC ended gas in new construction

141,000 Estimated jobs created this decade by NYC Local Law 97

6 Million Estimated annual metric tons of avoided climateheating pollution by 2030 via NYC Local Law 97

5 Full-time staff working on NYCC’s climate campaigns

20 and growing NYCC members’ climate committee

Inside NYCC

New York Communities for Change organizes in Black and Latino communities in New York City and on Long Island for economic, social and climate justice. The organization has a core, active membership of several hundred members attending events and meetings any given month. About 20,000 community members are “dues-paying members” who have donated at least $5 per month in the past decade.

NYCC swings for the fences: we tend to go for BIG wins on major efforts that inspire people and demonstrably improve our member’s lives. Our victories include: pioneering the Fight for $15, which led to a $15 an hour minimum wage; reform of New York’s rent laws in 2019, closing major loopholes landlords used to raise rents and evict people; and winning, along with allies, over $2 billion for direct relief for mostly undocumented workers in New York during COVID, who are otherwise excluded from

NYCC’s Biggest Recent Victories Include

Pioneering the Fight for $15, which led to a $15 an hour minimum wage

Reform of New York’s rent laws in 2019, closing major loopholes landlords used to raise rents and evict people

Over $2 billion for direct relief for mostly undocumented workers in New York during COVID, who are otherwise excluded from programs like unemployment programs like unemployment. NYCC is also heavily involved in corporate campaigns and organizing efforts, including to improve working conditions in Amazon’s notorious warehouses.

NYCC has 9 chapters, which hold regular meetings, as well as internal elections to the NYCC board. NYCC’s board and staff leadership are representative of the communities we organize. NYCC’s overall budget is about $3-4 million per year. The organization currently employs about 25 full-time staff.

We also fight at a community level, often opposing greedy landlords who unconscionably raise the rent, won’t repair buildings, or try to evict vulnerable community members.

It’s a fast-paced organization: each month, NYCC organizes around 15-25 events, mostly protests, on various campaigns as well as monthly meetings in our 9 chapters and 2 informal neighborhood groups. Any given week there are 3-5 events, mostly protests.

NYCC builds and maintains its membership through door to door or word of mouth (member to member) recruitment to meetings and events. Data and turnouts are rigorously tracked to promote accountability and to maximize follow up with people who show up to a meeting or activity.

Staff are organized primarily in two functional teams that meet weekly: organizing and campaigns.

There are over 10 staff organizers and several dedicated campaigners. Like with any nonprofit, there’s a creep of meeting-i-tis, but the internal environment is quick to make decisions and (usually!) functional. It is a tightly knit core leadership and staff, with deep relationships across movements, organizations and some elected officials.

Structurally, New York Communities for Change is a 501c(4) not-for-profit corporation. NYCC is wellknown for a community organization, with a public profile and “brand”. As with many organizations, NYCC works closely with a 501c(3) organization sister organization. NYCC’s sister organization, New York Communities Organizing Fund, Inc., is a 501c(3) not-for-profit that educates the public and provides services to the community. As a 501c(3), NYCOFI does not engage in partisan electoral politics. It is not as well-known as NYCC.

NYCC also plays the “inside” game, working personal and power-political relationships with elected officials and their top staffers to shape campaigns and get results. But we never, ever prioritize access. We do not hesitate to oppose powerful elected officials. NYCC members and staff also interview candidates for office and our member-led Board of Directors makes political endorsements.

While many advocacy and community organizations present as though they actively involve the community they nominally work within, in fact it’s all too rare, including in low-income communities of color. NYCC is all about building and applying people power in and for our communities. We are educating our members and the public to build a base and generate hard-hitting campaigns that can – and do – deliver major results.

This report is geared, in part, to help convince the climate world that investing time and money in basebuilding and hard-hitting, functional campaigns, as NYCC and other organizations demonstrate, can win transformational results.