Support A Democratic & Just New York
Democratize Healthcare:
The COVID-19 pandemic caused disproportionate deaths and long-term illnesses within vulnerable African Diasporic populations in New York City.
Moreover, the pandemic exposed how the toxic triggers of poverty, relative poverty, chronic unemployment, wage stagnation, wealth inequality, and environmental degradation contribute to poor health outcomes in many marginalized Communities of Color. This knowledge confirms that to achieve beneficial health equity within these communities, practitioners, patients, policymakers, community empowerment actors, and health justice advocates must incorporate the democratization of healthcare research and innovative economic democracy enterprises to mediate the toxic triggers that contribute to poor health outcomes.
To this end, our coalition proposes that the next Mayor must empower a public policy agenda for health equity by initiating the following democratic efforts:
Community Needs Assessment:
We propose that HH and the Department of Health fund a democratized community needs assessment process consistent with the Affordable Care Act's intentions. As envisioned, this community-led effort will incorporate Participatory Action Research,
empowering local residents to define the healthcare challenges and community assets needed to achieve health equity in their communities. The community needs assessments will define and operate within healthcare jurisdictions entitled Health and Wealth domains.
Community-led Participatory Budgeting:
The community needs assessment (PAR) should trigger community-led participatory budgeting (PB). This process will empower residents to define and fund programs addressing the non-medical resources necessary for health equity.
Health and Wealth Domain:
The Next Mayor should direct the Department of Health and HH to resource a community needs assessment organized by local residents within the proposed Health and Wealth Domain jurisdictions. As envisioned, the citizens of this jurisdiction will co create, with HH and the Department of Health, a deliberate commitment by hospitals, nursing homes, and ambulatory care centers to use their assets and to enact an anchor institution initiative that will mediate the toxic triggers driving poor health
outcomes. This place-based and sector-based initiative will prioritize building generational wealth to achieve beneficial health outcomes in distressed communities.
Health Enterprise HUBs:
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that a dysfunctional supply chain burdens the New York City health sector and endangers the lives of all residents. Many patients and front-line healthcare workers lost their lives during the pandemic because of a failure to deliver essential products and services to healthcare institutions in a timely and efficient way. Our coalition calls on the new Mayor to direct the Economic Development Corporation and HH to co-create a reformed healthcare sector supply chain and link it to a network of Health Enterprise HUBs organized within an economic democracy domain. As proposed, these HUBs will support unionized worker cooperatives in producing products (food, furniture, pharmaceuticals, etc.) and services needed by HHs, and in a more substantial healthcare sector. As proposed, the worker owners will be recruited from the designated Health and Wealth Domains, thereby mitigating the toxic triggers of unemployment, wage stagnation, and wealth inequality, which contribute to poor health outcomes. Moreover, this project will anchor a strategy for Surge Preparedness while making New York more affordable and safe.
Democratize Food Access through Cooperative Agriculture and Agritech:
Food access is fundamental to a democratic and inclusive city. For African Diasporic and other historically marginalized communities, the lack of reliable fresh food is not simply a health issue—it reflects more profound inequities in economic participation
and self-determination. A new approach must see food not as a commodity but as part of the city’s democratic and civic infrastructure.
The Urban Harvest Initiative demonstrates how cooperative agriculture and technology can reshape the food system in distressed neighborhoods. By pooling the harvests of multiple diverse-owned farms, establishing local processing hubs, and linking these networks through equitable distribution, the model keeps economic value and food access circulating within the communities most impacted by scarcity.
In dense urban settings, integrating agritech—particularly hydroponics and other controlled-environment systems—creates opportunities for year-round growth, reduced dependence on external supply chains, and innovative workforce pathways, including unionized worker cooperatives. Combined with cooperative pooling, this approach transforms small-scale farming into a collective engine of scale, resilience, and inclusion.
The Urban Harvest Initiative reimagines how food systems can function by emphasizing high-value, minimally processed foods produced and distributed within this cooperative and technologically enabled framework. It underscores that democratizing food access is not only about nutrition—it is about embedding equity, resilience, and shared participation into the city’s economic and civic life.
Democratize Education and Workforce Development:
New York City continues to have one of the most segregated public school systems in the nation. This educational caste system originates from an intergenerational transmission of racial and class inequality that marginalizes neighborhoods where poor, working-poor, and working-class students reside. Moreover, the command bureaucracy of a centralized education system (DOE) has adopted an elitist ethos that places select, specialized high schools above others.
Our coalition proposes a plan to democratize the educational system by allocating equitable resources to benefit students who aspire to acquire the knowledge, skills, and values needed for technical trades and to develop essential competencies for a new generation of New York City civil servants. Moreover, the resources invested in the specialized High Schools should be replicated and organized within a distributive justice framework that empowers parents and community empowerment actors to co create new neighborhood schools (see: Medgar Evers College Prep) that provide a rigorous education benefiting all children. To this end, we propose the following:
Early College High Schools that provide a formal articulation with CUNY, SUNY, HBCUs, and the independent colleges and universities (Cornell, Columbia, Tuskegee etc.). This model will give more African Diasporic students an opportunity for rigorous education than the minuscule number of “minority” students admitted to the specialized high schools.
Public Service Schools will prepare a new generation of civil servants to replace the talent lost due to the retirement of the “Baby Boomer” generation. The new Mayor should direct the Department of City Administrative Services and the Department of Education to co-create a network of high schools that will administer a formal articulation and pipeline to city agencies (Department of Education, Housing, Human Services, Healthcare, etc.) that provide essential services benefiting New York residents. A proposed Albert Vann School, organized as an Early College High School dedicated to preparing students for the teaching profession, will be an appropriate demonstration model (proof of concept). Career Technology Schools will provide pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships in our high schools to enhance the knowledge, skills, and values needed to enter the building and technical trades, empowering a new generation of workers to rebuild New York City’s infrastructure. Moreover, this problem-based learning method should offer students a certificate of mastery and a union card upon graduation. The next Mayor should collaborate with the teachers' union and the building trades to enact this mission by amending the state's apprenticeship
training law and incorporating the newly enacted Community Hiring Act, authored by Assemblywoman Stephanie Zinerman.
NYC Summer Academies should anchor and drive a reform of the summer school system by addressing the learning loss that students experienced during the COVID pandemic. As proposed, the next Mayor should direct the DOE to establish educational collaborations with select schools and/or the Departments of Education on college campuses across New York State. This collaboration will implement a seven-week (7 wk.) teaching and learning domain on campuses, where NYC students will secure academic enrichment and tutorial services. In addition, a new generation of aspiring teachers will serve in classrooms to enhance pre-service and in-service professional skills.
New Teacher Centers should anchor a reform of non-profit charter schools. Charter schools that share space with existing public schools should co-create an articulation agreement with a school or department of education, administered by a college or university. As proposed, the Teacher Centers will provide in-service and pre-service teacher development benefiting charter and traditional students.
Democratize Higher Education (CUNY):
A 2019 survey commissioned by Advocates for Children of New York confirmed that 14% of CUNY students were homeless. Moreover, 55% of CUNY students were challenged by housing insecurity, which caused them to couch serf, live in unhealthy, crowded conditions, or face eviction because of an inability to pay the rent.
The unaffordable housing crisis impacting CUNY students is primarily driven by unemployment and wage stagnation. This crisis could be mediated if the CUNY supply chain and group purchasing systems were reformed to provide a combination of educational and employment opportunities via an Anchor Institution Mission. To this end, the Coalition for a Democratic and Just New York proposes that the next NYC administration should enact the following economic democracy mission:
CUNY should collaborate with the NY Economic Development Corporation to reform the CUNY Group Purchasing Organization by directing procurement opportunities to enterprises created by CUNY students. This effort should align with experiential learning opportunities offered by the diverse business schools and departments within the CUNY system.
CUNY should collaborate with the NY Economic Development Corporation to launch a community-led development initiative that creates an economic democracy domain within city-owned industrial parks. In this economic democracy domain, student entrepreneurs and unionized worker cooperatives can produce products and services for the CUNY system, thus enhancing employment and generational wealth benefiting CUNY students.
The Coalition for a Just and democratic New York opposes the Trump regime's attempt to impose a right-wing censorship of academic efforts that encourage scholarship concerning African American history, Africana history, and other multicultural learning domains. Given this autocratic attack on free speech, we propose the following:
The next mayor should collaborate with the New York City Council to enact a new local law that codifies and strengthens the New York State Constitution's freedom of speech clause. As envisioned, the latest local law will prohibit city-funded public
schools, museums, libraries, and CUNY institutions from engaging in viewpoint discrimination that violates the principles of academic freedom, freedom of inquiry, and freedom of conscience.