This page is designed to help you connect to community organizations and interest groups that are doing political work in NYC, many of which also reach beyond the city. If the list of links seems overwhelming, please consider looking here or here at some resources to help you think about how to start doing political action. Please also note that the creators of this website are not endorsing any particular organization, nor suggesting that any organization is better to work with than any other. Due to WordPress formatting issues, some group names may be in a larger font than others, but this is solely due to technical difficulties.

Community organizations are formed in a wide variety of ways. Some address a particular issue area, like Climate Change, or Neighborhood/Housing Justice. Others are designed to help people act in support of particular communities, such as the lists below for Black Empowerment and Latino Empowerment. Or, others are designed to help groups of people who are facing a particular issue themselves but may be from different communities, such as the lists below for Immigrant/Refugee Empowerment. These are very important ways in which people of particular identities or direct experiences come together to do political work.

It is also extremely important for people who are not from those communities, or who are not going through those direct experiences, to help do political work on those issues. This is often referred to as acting as an “ally” to people who are directly impacted by a kind of experience/legal status such as immigration, or a system of oppression, such as racism. Some of the organizations below are only for people who identify as part of that community or direct experience, while others are open to everyone, and yet others are specifically designed as “ally” organizations. Typically, an ally organization is one for people who are not directly affected by an issue or are not part of a certain community themselves, but who want to help a group of directly impacted people. An example of this is the group Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), in which white people work together against racism (something they are not directly impacted by), and work on how to best support political action by people of color on racial justice issues.

Before you pick a new organization to contact (or before going to one of their events), read about the group online. Most organizations have an About Us section on their website, which will tell you who is involved in the group’s work, and may even link to an ally organization they work with. If this is unclear, you can email the group to ask. Please respect the needs of particular communities who find it important to have an organization or an event that is solely for people of that identity or experience. Many communities are dealing with basic safety concerns for their members, along with facing great political uncertainties in their near future. This means it is extremely important for people not identifying as part of those communities to take action, and equally important that they do it with care for people who are directly impacted. This begins with respecting communities’ wishes for having their own organizations or events.

More in-depth resources on allyship and solidarity can be found here, here, and here. We hope to be able to link to more resources and trainings in the near future.