Families United for Racial & Economic Equality (FUREE) is a Brooklyn-based, multi-issue, multi-racial organization made up of almost exclusively low-income women of color, the majority having first-hand experience with public assistance (PA). We are uniting low-income people to build POWER to change the system so that all people's work is valued and all of us have the right and economic means to decide and live out our own destinies. We accomplish our goals through collective decision-making, direct action, leadership development and political education. Our guiding principle is that the people directly affected by the policies we are organizing to change should lead the organization.
The approximately 300 families who make up the FUREE membership are all low-income and largely headed by women of color - roughly 65% Latina and 35% African-American. The majority are current or former recipients of PA. They live in Brooklyn neighborhoods including East New York, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Red Hook, Gowanus and Brownsville. These communities are all characterized by substantial African-American and Latino populations and high rates of poverty, unemployment, underemployment and low-wage dead-end jobs. Large numbers of our members and their neighbors are mono-lingual Spanish speakers.
History and Major Accomplishments
FUREE started in the winter of 2000 when a group of fifteen women decided to organize against BEGIN - the City’s combination workfare and “education” program - to fight for access to education and training for all people receiving public assistance (PA). Although BEGIN was touted as an effective program offering Adult Basic Education and English for Speakers of Other Languages, the women were unhappy that they had to work three days a week in a workfare placement, were learning nothing in their “classes,” and were forced to look for low-wage, no benefit jobs. They decided to organize for access to education and training for people receiving PA, recognizing that education allows individuals to shape the future for themselves, their families and their communities. They chose to use this campaign to build an organization to fight for economic justice that would include all low-income Brooklyn women.
Three and a half years ago FUREE took the lead in forming a citywide Coalition for Access to Training and Education (CATE) to change New York City policy to allow people receiving public assistance to choose education instead of workfare or BEGIN. On April 9, 2003, we won an enormous victory when the New York City Council overrode a Mayoral veto and voted, 46-5, to pass our Access to Training and Education Law (Local Law 23). This new law, which we hope will be a model adopted by other cities and states, marks a drastic change in New York City’s approach to implementing welfare reform and presents an innovative way to include education and training as a work activity within the legal framework of state and federal welfare laws.
FUREE members have played leading roles in a number of local and national actions to bring the voices of women on public assistance into the national debate over TANF re-authorization. This has included participating in mass mobilizations of people receiving PA and an action at George Bush’s Texas ranch. In January 2004, FUREE participated in an historic “Dialogue with America’s Families,” in which six Presidential candidates responded to questions from low-income people from organizations around the country.
Current Program and Activities
FUREE’s organizing program has been designed by our members, who seek to build a base of low-income families organized to fight to create options for people to exit poverty. Our current work falls into four areas:
Organizing home childcare providers: Since 1995, New York City has led the nation in enforcing harsh work requirements in exchange for PA benefits. The thousands of single parents forced out of their homes to comply with welfare to work requirements have placed a huge strain on the City’s already overburdened subsidized childcare program. Home-based childcare providers licensed and unlicensed care for many of the children in the City’s subsidized childcare program, and despite the important work they do are the lowest paid category of childcare providers. The highest paid home-based providers earn about $16,000 per year and most receive far less, between $20 and $30 per day per child. After expenses, many of these workers, overwhelmingly women of color, are left with less than $2 per hour per child, for some of society’s most essential work. The City’s inefficient payment system further traps many of these providers in poverty. FUREE is organizing home-based child care providers to win better wages and working conditions.
Access to education and training: According to the New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA), 55% of New York City's welfare recipients do not have a high school diploma or GED. Data shows that a high school degree or its equivalent increases median earnings by $100-150 per week. Yet only 4.1% of people receiving PA in New York City are currently engaged in education or training. FUREE is organizing to ensure implementation of our access to training and education law, Local Law 23, which would allow people receiving PA to count education as a work activity. Mayor Bloomberg filed a lawsuit against the City Council to block implementation, and we are working with our allies to counteract the suit through direct action and applying pressure on the Mayor and HRA, meeting with City agencies and stakeholders to pressure the Mayor from within, and working with attorneys to explore legal options.
Building low-income people’s electoral and legislative power locally and nationally: In the past few years, FUREE played a central role in national coalitions working to bring the voices of low-income women of color to the TANF Reauthorization debate. This work with the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support/The Center for Community Change (CCC) and Grassroots Organizing for Welfare Leadership (GROWL) was essential in bringing our members’ voices to the national level. One important lesson that FUREE members learned in this work was that while we won huge victories and were able to influence policy, we would have been even more effective if policy-makers had considered our members and our constituency to be voters. In local and national evaluations, our members voiced the belief that if people holding (or seeking) office, viewed our members as voters, then they would be forced to address our members’ issues in their policy and/or campaign platforms. FUREE decided that to increase our ability to build power to create exits from poverty for low-income people, we must explore ways to add electoral work to our arsenal of tactics. As the 2004 Presidential election approaches, we will build voter education, mobilization and registration into our program work. This will provide us with critical learning opportunities as we prepare to make our constituency’s demands relevant to the outcome of City’s 2005 Mayoral race.
FUREE is also playing a lead role on the Coordinating Committee of the Still We Rise Coalition, working to organize a massive low-income people of color to march on the Republican National Convention on August 30, 2004 (www.stillwerise.org) to bring attention to the issues facing low-income families. Please Join Us!
Strengthening FUREE’s infrastructure: In early 2002, FUREE members decided to separate from our parent organization, The Fifth Avenue Committee, to become independent so that our members can have full responsibility and control over the organization’s governance and destiny. On July 1, 2004, FUREE became a totally independent organization.
We have recently restructured FUREE’s staff to include a Member Organizer, who coordinates monthly Member Nights, member orientations and membership meetings. We completed the inaugural session of the FUREE Institute of Resistance and Equality (FIRE), a training program that runs three cycles each year. FIRE was created to build our leaders’ analysis of the root causes of the issues we are trying to change and strengthen their practical organizing skills.
For more information on FUREE, e-mail Rusia Mohiuddin at rusiam@fifthave.org
or Ilana Berger at iberger@fifthave.org, or call (718) 857-2990. You can also check out their entry in the Compass for Change directory!
