FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Imani Henry

Email:

[email protected]

Phone:

646.342.9673

Equality for Flatbush urges Brooklyn residents “To Take The Pledge” and  build “No Eviction,” “No Foreclosure” and “No Gentrification” Zones block-by-block, building-by-building

Before It’s Gone // Take It Back Community Forums on Gentrification to take place to fight displacement in Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Flatbush, and other neighborhoods in Brooklyn this spring

On February 22, to a crowd of over 60 residents of the Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Clinton Hill area, organizers with Before It’s Gone// Take it Back: Documenting Brooklyn; Fighting Gentrification (B4G) , a neighborhood and web-based response to the crisis of gentrification of Brooklyn, launched a community and direct action “This is a No-Eviction Zone” campaign.   A Brooklyn-wide campaign of the resident-led group Equality for Flatbush,  “This is a No-Eviction Zone” centers around a 6-point platform, calling for Brooklyn residents to stand with their “neighbors against foreclosures, forced evictions, buyouts and price-outs” by supporting and /or participating “in lawsuits, letter-writing campaigns, picketlines, rent strikes, eviction blockades, lobby days and other tactics to hold corporate developers and greedy landlords accountable.”  

The pledge also calls on residents to support and patronize “businesses that are essential to low-to-middle income people in my neighborhood" as “to pledge to not allow the NYPD to unlawfully harass or violate the civil rights of my neighbors or myself" -- given that “studies have shown that gentrification and police harassment go hand in hand." Flyers, stickers and window signs in Spanish, Urdu, Russian and English were distributed to the crowd.

Other Before It’s Gone meetings are scheduled for Brooklyn neighborhoods most impacted in Brooklyn this spring, including in East New York on March 29th  at 3pm co-sponsored by Crystal House, a East New York project of Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and in Flatbush on April 18th, 6:30pm at the Third Root Community Health Center.   There will be a B4G organizing forum on gentrification for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer Brooklyn residents at the Brooklyn Pride Center on March 17th.  The LGBTQ meeting will be a kickoff to a 10-week series starting on March 31st,  entitled “Documenting Queer Brooklyn: Before It’s Gone // Take It Back” on existing LGBTQ culture in Brooklyn and the rapid changes due to gentrification.   One the main goals of the Before It’s Gone project is to launch a website hub:

http://beforeitsgone.com/

that would serve as self-documentary art archive for Brooklyn residents to share their stories, celebrating their lives and resilience in the wake of gentrification. The site would also provide vital housing, legal and organizing resources to help in the fight to keep Brooklyn residents stay in their homes. Currently organizers are engaged in a series of fundraisers and a crowdsourcing campaign to raise $8,000 by May 1st in order to finish construction, gather the resources and launch the site.

According to Equality for Flatbush Tumblr page, gentrification is defined as a "concerted and deliberate effort to price out low-to-middle-income residents from neighborhoods by city government, corporations, real estate developers, and landlords in favor of renting, selling, and catering to people of higher and/or more flexible incomes. We know from first-hand experience that the same unscrupulous property owners who use tactics to force longtime older tenants of color out of their rent-stabilized apartments will turn around and illegally overcharge incoming younger white tenants for the same apartment. For this very reason, we believe that all of us -- longtime and new residents, communities of color and white communities, low-income and middle-class people -- have a stake in the urgent struggle to save affordable housing in Brooklyn."

Victor Moses, a 24-year-old lifelong resident of  East Flatbush said, "I was born and raised in Brooklyn. My heart has been set since I was young on living and starting a family here, like my parents did.  But with rents the way they are, I can't manage that.”  Moses, who is also a recent Morehouse College graduate as well as an activist with Equality for Flatbush, added, “The entire idea that I can't even live in the city of my birth seems crazy to me, that somehow this place that formed so much of who I am, is all of a sudden not for me? Not for my kids? That is something that I can't and won't accept -- that's why I fight.”  

Katie Hydell, a 34-year-old special education teacher, who is a new B4G organizer and has only lived in the Bushwick for the last 2 years, says, “I believe that affordable housing is a human right for all. It is time to show the people at the top that having all the money does not mean having all the power and we will fight until we win. In fact, the last point of our No-Eviction Zone campaign says, 'I believe that we win'”!

Brooklyn residents can receive “No-Eviction Zone” signs, flyers and stickers, schedule a community meeting and get involved in the campaign by calling or texting Equality for Flatbush at

(646) 820-6039

or En Español

(513) 445-8532

. E-mails can be sent to

[email protected]

 On social media follow the hashtags: #BeforeItsGone #NoEvictionZone  and #BrooklynisOURS

The Equality for Flatbush Project, (E4F) is a people of color-led multi-national grassroots organization which does anti-police repression, affordable housing and anti-gentrification organizing in the Flatbush and East Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn, NY.  Equality for Flatbush was founded in June of 2013 and is a volunteer–run organization. We seek to organize our communities for social change and justice through street outreach, social media campaigns, political advocacy and direct action. BEFORE IT'S GONE // TAKE IT BACK: Documenting Brooklyn - Fighting Gentrification is a Brooklyn-wide project of Equality for Flatbush

http://www.gofundme.com/Before-Its-Gone

.

Brooklyn residents can call Equality for Flatbush to consult or have organizers sent to help organize No-Eviction Zone strategies in their neighborhoods. E4F also currently offers housing, legal and community organizing resources to Brooklyn residents.