For nearly 30 years, BroSis has been at the intersection of community organizing and policy change – working for justice and equity and access.

We have worked to ensure low-income housing in our community and create a more sustainable NYC; to reform stop and frisk and the criminal justice system overall as well as to legalize marijuana and thus eliminate disparate enforcement; to organize for food access and justice, while managing a farmers market, and engaging in environmental organizing and bringing composting systems to community gardens throughout NYC; and to increase mental health providers in our schools while decreasing youth criminalization.

Our shortened policy priorities list can be found here.

Our work is interconnected and intersectional on these issues – including political education, youth-led organizing, staff-led organizing, and NYS and NYC policy-related efforts. Our position on these matters is informed by our extensive work in this field and our expertise. As an organization, we are on the frontlines of education justice work. Our Organizing and Policy priorities are guided and informed by our young people and the campaigns they create.

All of our youth organizers work alongside our staff organizers at the city level to advance their campaigns. Our staff organizers work to advance policy efforts at the state level and our youth organizers serve as advocates where necessary.

Our Program Includes:

New York City

At the city level, we continue to advance the Liberation Program’s Save Our Schools (SOS) campaign.

With the SOS campaign, BroSis youth organizers demand that the NYC Department of Education, among other things:

• Institute a Student Support Staff to Student ratio of no greater than 1:100 – the current ratio is approximately 1 to 400.
• Divest from the School to Prison Pipeline and policing culture and remove NYPD personnel from the schools and ensure security that is not punitive but protective.
• Invest in student and community-led restorative justice and safety strategies
• To create mental health support clubs in a school within District 5 and/or 6.

New York State 

At the state level, we continue to advance the Liberation Program’s Build Youth Power (BYP) campaigns.

In the BYP campaign, BroSis youth organizers demand that NYC students be:

• Educated about our rights as students and stories as peoples
• Allotted an equitable number of enfranchised positions on current leadership and administrative bodies within the Department of Education (DOE) and paid for our participation
• Engaged and enfranchised to steward our educational administration
• Structurally supported in alleviating our grievances

The primary focus of this campaign this year is to pass legislation to change education law. We continue to work to amend Education Law 2590-B, 2950-C, 2590-H to allow for student voting power on the Panel for Education Policy, Community Education Councils, School Leadership Teams, respectively. This will ensure that all students on the aforementioned bodies have the power to vote on decisions that impact other students.

Overall

More broadly, in doing this work, we have engaged in the following:

1. Writing letters to the governor and testifying at numerous hearings regarding the funding our schools deserve – especially as it pertains to funding student support staff;
2. Publishing a white paper on the monies required for our students to learn at schools resourced with support staff at a 1:100 staff-to-student ratio;
3. Introducing legislation to enfranchise NYC public school students on decision-making bodies;
4. Leading efforts to create student mental health peer support clubs in our district;
5. Creating public art projects at which youth speak their truth and share their stories;
6. Partnering with the Criminal Defense Clinic at Columbia University Law School to advance legislative efforts in project-based work;
7. Hosting events that equip our community – members, families, and neighbors alike – with information and resources to thrive in these times.

We endeavor to strengthen the continuum of care around our youth. We seek to protect youth from the carceral state; nurture the agency of our youth as it relates to their own futures and the future of our planet; support the holistic wellness of our young people and their families; and co-create an education system that serves the needs of our youth.

In harnessing political education, organizer trainings, policy efforts, and art as a tool for activism, we – alongside our members – challenge inequity and champion justice across a range of issues.