Make the Road New York

Make the Road New York was created in 2007 by the coming together of Make the Road by Walking and the Latin American Integration Center. Make the Road New York is an effort to increase the scale of our operations to build power for all of New York City’s low-income and immigrant majority. We will build on our proven successes to create a new citywide organization that combines:

democratic accountability to low-income people,
an innovative mix of strategies to confront inequality and economic injustice, and
deep and active community roots.

Make the Road New York will promote justice, equality and opportunity by:

1) Building a new level of political power for low-income and recent immigrant New Yorkers:

Traditionally, low-income people are spoken for. Clergy, elected officials, policy advocates and others purport to represent low-income communities, but they rarely, if ever, consult those they seek to represent. In communities from Bushwick to Corona to Port Richmond, a majority of residents are excluded from electoral participation by age and immigration status. Language barriers further impede political participation. For example, in Bushwick eighty-five percent of households do not speak English in the home.

Make the Road New York, though, is representative of and directly accountable to our communities. Dues-paying members elect representatives to our Board of Directors from among our membership, and our Board of Directors sets the vision and goals of our organization. We have built a sizeable, trained base of members. Through participation in our organization, these people become uncharacteristically politically powerful among low-income New Yorkers. They are the people that get called by the press and they are the people who speak at public hearings about the policies that shape lives and communities throughout New York City.

Make the Road New York combines participatory decision making, deep community roots, and democratic accountability with experience, a solid track record of success, high- functioning infrastructure and citywide reach. Through our organization, low-income people are becoming the driving force behind citywide public policy decisions that affect their children, their families and their communities.

2) Expanding the scope and quality of services we provide in three of the fastest growing and most underserved boroughs of New York City:

Creating Make the Road New York has enabled us to bring the full compliment of services offered by both Make the Road by Walking and the Latin American Integration Center to all three boroughs in which we work. The population of these three boroughs is close to five million people.

Make the Road by Walking’s high-quality free legal services for housing, employment, debt, disability and government benefits issues will be brought to Queens and Staten Island communities that desperately need them. The Latin American Integration Center’s expertise providing extensive adult education and citizenship services will benefit thousands in Eastern Brooklyn and Western Queens. Make the Road by Walking’s proven youth development and organizing model will be brought to numerous, largely unorganized communities with tens of thousands of New Yorkers under eighteen.

3) Promoting excellence:

By bringing together a diverse range of experiences and skill-sets in one organization, the merger has enabled us to combine the best practices of both organizations to improve the quality of programming at all three sites.

By creating a more dynamic, high-impact organization, we are better situated to recruit and retain experienced, high-quality staff.

4) Organizing a broad network:

The merger has enabled us to organize a broad network of people and institutions that will promote connection, community, information-sharing, and mutual support. Churches, schools, immigrant and ethnic communities, local organizing committees and residents will be connected among the three boroughs. These connections will engender communication, understanding and unity, and build a stronger voice for all.

All too often organized communities succeed at the peril of their neighbors. For example, if the Bushwick community wins government funding for park development, this reduces the availability of funds for parks in Port Richmond. By creating a citywide organization, with a membership that hails from all over the city, we are better able to create a bigger pie for low-income New Yorkers, rather than just winning a bigger piece of the same old pie, at the expense of our neighbors.

5) Creating economies of scale and increased organizational efficiency:

Administrative and management costs account for approximately twenty percent of our organizational budget. By merging organizations and operations, we have realized considerable savings. We only need one bookkeeper, one accountant, one insurance broker, and one set of attorneys, instead of two. While we still need reception and facilities maintenance staff at all of our sites, we only need one set of senior staff to supervise our Organizing, Youth Development, Adult Education, Legal and Development departments. We have created organizational efficiency by eliminating duplicative work, creating training materials, intake forms, organizing methodologies and curricula that are standard across all programs and locations.

Make the Road By Walking

Make the Road by Walking was founded in 1997 in a Bushwick church basement by local residents to address the potentially devastating effects of welfare reform on America's poor and immigrant communities.

Make the Road by Walking initially focused exclusively on organizing immigrant welfare recipients, but soon expanded its focus to combat the systemic economic and political marginalization of Bushwick residents. More importantly, Make the Road by Walking galvanized Bushwick's untapped commitment to democratic participation and resistance to oppression. Make the Road by Walking became a powerful force for low-income immigrants across New York City. In keeping with our democratic values, Make the Road by Walking became a membership organization in 1999. Make the Road by Walking's low-income members paid dues to support the organization, voted to elect the Board of Directors, and constituted the majority of voting seats on the board.

In response to the outpouring of interest and expressed needs from community members, Make the Road by Walking expanded substantially since its initial start at St. Barbara's Church. In less than a decade, it moved from an all-volunteer organization to a staff of 25 full-time and 20 part-time employees, plus an ever-growing membership base of over 2,300 community residents. Its initial budget of $72,000 grew to almost $2.5 million in 2007.

Latin American Integration Center

The Latin American Integration Center (LAIC) was founded by Saramaria Archila, a social justice lawyer from Colombia, committed to the protection of human rights and the promotion of democratic participation. In the early 1990s, when her home country was strangled by violence and fear she escaped to New York, a city historically rooted to liberty and democracy and one that boasts unparalleled diversity and growth.

Like many thousands of immigrants before her, Saramaria experienced the grandiosity of the City and its history, but also encountered systemic obstacles that barred access to the most basic services and failed to protect immigrant rights. She was inspired to create LAIC through her efforts at mobilizing a team of Latino community members to overcome these barriers and build leadership within New York’s political and civic life.

Since its founding in 1992, LAIC developed into a thriving community-based organization with centers in Queens and Staten Island. LAIC aimed to strengthen Latin American immigrant communities in New York City by promoting the exercise and protection of human and civil rights of immigrants. Their work promoted the empowerment of Latino and immigrant communities through community education, community organizing and strategic policy advocacy, as well as access to quality services for immigrants and their families.