Grass-roots efforts growing
New organizations taking root during this volatile year
Jamaica Miles started a new activist organization in February — “before all hell broke loose.”
The longtime Capital Region activist had a vision to organize her hometown of Schenectady. All of Us, her new organization, was her solution, focusing on issues and changes needed in Schenectady.
But then Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor were killed, and the organization quickly pivoted to rally for Black lives. The killing of George Floyd, however, was what changed everything. Thousands of people in the Capital Region flooded the streets crying Floyd’s name, and more activist organizations began pop
ping up.
While the most prevalent activist organizations in the Capital Region used to be Albany's Citizen Action of New York and Troy 4 Black Lives, that number has multiplied this past summer to nearly 10 groups — most of which were founded in the wake of Floyd’s killing.
“It was this volcanic eruption of feelings and frustration that needed a space to go to,” Miles said. “There is no one organization that can hold all issues and all people. People look for spaces to be in and it looks different for different people. Others created their own, some with their own experience and some with none.”
One of those groups is E.L.E.V.A.T.E. 518. Founded in June by a group of Black women in their late teens and early 20s, E.L.E.V.A.T.E. 518’s main goal is to create a space for Black women to express themselves and amplify their voices in community conversations.
As members of the group attended the numerous protests taking place across the region, they quickly realized not many women were leading those protests — despite the fact that many were in the crowd. So they made space for themselves.
“It's just a sisterhood that is based off of amplifying these Black and brown women’s voices,” said Destini Harris, a co-founder of the group. “It’s something that often gets shut out or people don’t see or hear about it, so they think it’s just not existent.”
At their debut march Aug. 1, well over 100 people turned out, but only Black women held the megaphone — and it’s been the same at every event since. The August event was focused on amplifying the experiences of Black women, and the names of Black women who died — many of which the crowd did not recognize. It's all part of one of the most energized activist moments in Capital Region history.
“It’s a perfect storm,” Miles said. “We’re not just in the middle of all of this racial injustice … but we are also in the middle of a global pandemic where there were groups of people who previously were not impacted by the systems and structures to the degree marginalized folks were, and they woke up
“The beast that we’re fighting, it has many heads, many legs, many arms. There are many ways in which we have to attack it.”
Shawn Young, All of Us co-founder
one morning and realizing, ‘Oh my God, this injustice really does exist and now it’s impacting me, too.’”
As that energy picked up and more groups were created, it quickly became a clear to the activist community that a coalition needed to be built across groups. Many of the same activists show up to protests in Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga, uniting together in their common goal.
Protests have happened in front of Bumpy's Ice Cream in Schenectady, where the operator was accused of sending racist texts, to the streets of Saratoga Springs, where the City Council this past week just set up more stringent guidelines after protesters were alongside outdoor diners on Phila Street.
“The beast that we’re fighting, it has many heads, many legs, many arms. There are many ways in which we have to attack it,” said Shawn Young, co-founder of All of Us. “I think it’s important that as each organization joins the fight, we support one another and understand that there’s not just one way to do this.”
Many of E.L.E.V.A.T.E. 518’s events and social media posts, for example, are focused on pushing people to fill out their census, mobilizing people to register to vote and raising awareness about education budget cuts this year.
Youth Political Alliance is another grass-roots organization that was founded two months ago to dismantle political systems they believe harm communities of color.
It aims to spread awareness and mobilize young voters. While at the moment the organization is focused on voter turnout in November, they have longer-term plans to support progressive candidates who run for office.
“I experienced a forced reckoning with how really corrupted and broken a system that governance and control are,” Aden Suchak, co-founder of Youth Political Alliance, said. “The main thing for me is the structure of the way that things are done, and the relationships between different organizations of government that we have. We need to recycle leadership.”