The Initiative for Community Power fosters deep community partnerships and brings decades of high-impact community organizing and power-building work. The Initiative catalyzes analysis, innovation, and project work to create a more equitable, democratic, and racially just society.
The Initiative combines scholarship, field-building, experiential education, convenings, field placements to study and challenge inequality and anti-democracy. The Initiative works closely with non-profit, academic and government partners to reimagine the parameters of the possible, and to transform our vision of dynamic democracy, rooted in racial and economic justice, into reality. The Initiative is a partnership between the Center on Race, Inequality and the Law at NYU School of Law and NYU Wagner School of Public Service.
The Fellowship/s:
The Initiative is seeking one to three fellows/interns interested in pursuing, or continuing, a career focused on community power-building, racial justice, movement lawyering and democratic engagement. The Fellow will need to work 5-10 hours per week for at least 7 weeks at $15-$20/hour each semester.
The Fellow/s will play an important role in the Initiative’s evolving work, under the supervision of the Initiative’s leadership. The Fellow will be expected to actively participate in the Center’s research, organizing, campaigning and organizational partnerships. Over the course of the fellowship, the fellow should have the opportunity to produce research and engage deeply with rooted community organizations working to advance innovative strategies to promote justice and equity.
Priority projects for Fall 2022 include:
- Racial Capitalism and Law and Organizing Convenings: help to plan and actualize a few large multi-organizational convenings focused on important and emergent themes among social justice practitioners.
- Promoting Power for Tenants: In partnership with key tenant organizations in New York City (Make the Road NY, Housing Justice for All, New York Communities for Change…), the Initiative is working on a campaign to create policy to promote tenant unions and tenant power; and
- Catalyzing Effective Power-building and Organizing Work with Lawyers: the Initiative is working to create a broad set of training materials and resources to help train law students and lawyering in effective community organizing practices and fostering deep, collaborative relationships with empowered constituency-based organizations.
- Supporting efforts to promote social housing in New York State.
To apply, please submit the materials listed below in a single PDF to the Initiative’s Director, Andrew Friedman, at andrew.friedman@nyu.edu. Please use the subject line “2022 Fall Fellowship.” Your application should include:
- Cover letter describing your interest in, and qualifications for, the Fellowship program, including an explanation of why you would like to become a Fellow of the Center;
- Resume; and
- Writing sample
To learn more about the Initiative, please feel free to email the address above.