NYC Organizing Directory

“Education as the practice of freedom must begin with meeting the people's basic needs. Without food, shelter, and dignity, learning cannot be liberatory.”

bell hooks

Education should be a pathway to self-determination and collective liberation, not a system of punishment, surveillance, or control. Yet across New York City, students and families are criminalized for simply trying to survive when they are unhoused, hungry, or denied the basic resources to learn and thrive.

This NYC Organizing Directory uplifts the interconnected struggles and organizing led by Black, Brown, immigrant, working-class, queer, trans, disabled, and youth communities across NYC’s five boroughs. Abolitionist education justice is rooted in care (instead of carcerality), community, and building collective power, this is a living tool to connect with grassroots movements fighting for:

  • Housing justice

  • Food sovereignty

  • Educational justice

  • Community safety and healing

  • Immigrant rights

  • Gender justice and birth justice

  • Alternatives to policing and incarceration

From community fridges to court support, tenant unions to youth-led political education, this directory hosts the everyday resistance and abolitionist vision already being built in our neighborhoods.

Whether you're seeking support, plugging into local organizing, or deepening your political education, this space exists to remind us: abolition is not about absence. It's about presence of care, solidarity, and the resources we need to live and learn freely.