CLT | CEANYC

CEANYC Stands for Climate Justice

December 7, 2017January 5, 2018

Five years ago, Superstorm Sandy blasted our city, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless. As a result, communities—primarily those comprised of low income New Yorkers of color—were devastated. As we saw in Sandy and Katrina, and have seen again with Irma, Maria, and Harvey, institutional support fails to keep our cities safe and rebuild the lives of those on the frontlines. Cooperatives—like housing cooperatives and community land trusts, food cooperatives, worker-owned cooperatives, community gardens, and housing cooperatives—on the other hand, have a history of immense resilience and support. It is community-owned and community-governed land and property that will provide people (us) necessary relief in the wake of disaster We know that climate change makes storms like Sandy more violent and intense, and we know that fossil fuels and an economy rooted in extraction and environmental racism are to blame. Disasters like Sandy will get worse as long as our elected officials keep supporting profit over people, whether it happens through fossil fuel extraction or luxury development on our city’s waterfront, and our most vulnerable communities will be the ones […]

Policy Plans

September 30, 2017December 26, 2017

On September 18th, we convened with representatives from worker cooperative, housing cooperative, and low-income credit union networks to discuss cross-sectoral policy and advocacy strategy moving forward. With city support for expanding worker ownership through initiatives like the Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative, increased attention on housing cooperatives and community land trusts as a way to resist gentrification and climate displacement, and expanding participation in credit unions and public banks across the country, we believe it is crucial to work together to develop a cooperative platform for New York’s solidarity economy. In the past, CEANYC has supported sectoral advocacy in a variety of ways: supporting worker cooperative expansion, amplifying and participating in calls to action from: the New York City Community Garden Coalition to preserve endangered gardens, Urban Homesteading Assistance Board on tenants rights campaigns, advocating for a community land trust on the contested Bedford-Union Armory site, and National Federation of Community Development Credit Unionsa federal push to preserve Community Development Financial Institutions, and New Economy Project’s campaigns to protect low-income New Yorkers from predatory lending. We have also supported single issue […]

About Our Directory

July 18, 2017December 26, 2017

In times of crisis and corruption, we continue to see which solutions work—repair homes, sustain food sources, create jobs, save lives—and which ones do not. When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in 2012, we were reminded that cooperation in the form of community self-organization and networks of solidarity kept the death count low while large non-profit organizations, corporations, and government support failed to make long-term and effective change. People share, barter, crowdsource, and sacrifice in order to replenish what has been taken from them and maintain what little they may have. Such collaboration has been and will be our greatest strength in the face of other inevitable natural disasters, increased militarization, police brutality, gentrification, and economic crisis. While the resilience and power of a people united is most visible in times of catastrophe, these networks of inter- and cross- community support are operating every day around the world, including here in New York City. Yet, the solidarity economy, despite its rich and diverse history as well as intuitive logic, remains an ‘alternative’ to our dominant system: extractive capitalism. In order to figure […]