Steering Committee Members
Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN)
The mission of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) is to help people dealing with poverty create and discover opportunities, while serving as a vehicle to ensure they have voice, power and opinion in the decisions that are directly affecting them.
LA CAN employs four major organizing strategies: legal advocacy, community education and empowerment, community organizing and leadership development, and grassroots policy and community-based research. Through these avenues, LA CAN works to protect the civil rights of homeless and low-income people, build a broad base of informed residents that possess the tools necessary to defend their rights, both on the streets and in residential hotels, build a broad base organization of informed leaders and constituents who understand gentrification and its many tenets and are equipped to fight for progressive redevelopment policy and its tangible benefits, and develop grassroots policy that promotes opportunities for living-wage employment and affordable housing that meets the income levels of our constituents. In addition, LA CAN is engaged in investigating, monitoring and enforcing current policy that should benefit our constituents.
Mayday New Orleans
Mayday New Orleans is a people-driven and inspired economic and social justice organization. Mayday believes that active participation from community members is essential to ensuring that basic rights such as adequate housing, health care, education and safe streets are met. Therefore, Mayday is comprised primarily of residents who live in the communities which have been directly impacted by governmental policies. It is Mayday’s goal to hold government, the private sector, and those who work on behalf of communities accountable for their policies and practices.
Through public education, training, community empowerment, and grassroots organizing, Mayday is working to build stronger communities in post-Katrina New Orleans by providing a number of support services for low income residents including an adult GED program, a youth mentorship program and a job training program.
Learn more about Mayday New Orleans
Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign
The Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign (C-AEC) is a community organization founded and led by residents directly impacted by the housing crisis. C-AEC work began with the goal of stopping all economically motivated evictions in Chicago through direct action. In the absence of a national moratorium on evictions, the Campaign has instituted a people’s moratorium by putting our bodies in front of sheriffs and putting our people back in their homes.
C-AEC’s work seeks to bridge the gap between local to international housing rights movements. Originally inspired by the work of tenants in post-apartheid South Africa, the Campaign has been instrumental in revealing human right to housing violations in Chicago and connecting local issues to national policy debates. C-AEC is the homeless, foreclosed, public housing and subsidized residents, and market rate renters fighting as one under the human right to housing framework.
Learn more about Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign
Northeastern Pennsylvania Organizing Center
Founded in 2008, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Organizing Center is a resident-led organization dedicated to providing our community the means to develop long-term solutions to human rights issues.
N.E. PA Organizing Center combines organizing support, outreach and intake in rural communities, and media programs through issue-based campaigns in order to bring community voices to the forefront of policy discussion. Our goal is to create an organized and sustainable system that is truly responsive to those affected by emerging issues of poverty.
Learn more about NEPA Organizing Center
Picture the Homeless – New York City
Picture the Homeless is an organization founded on the principle that in order to end homelessness, people who are homeless must become an organized, effective voice for systemic change. We have a track record of developing leadership among homeless people to impact policies and systems that affect their lives. Picture the Homeless’ efforts have created space for homeless people, and their agenda, within the broader social justice movement.
Our Housing campaign is working to transform the use of vacant spaces through a range of tactics – including direct action occupations and renovations, public education, and participatory research. Our goal is to facilitate the creation of safe, secure and truly affordable housing for the lowest income residents of the city, through innovative community and housing development models.
