WHO WE ARE

Claim Our Space Now is a NYC Based and Black-Queer and Immigrant led, fiscally sponsored nonprofit organization focused on building and mobilizing community power by making activism accessible and dismantling systems of white supremacy through our three tenets: Inform, Inspire, Speak Truth to Power. As an intersectional coalition, we act as a multimedia resource online and on-the-ground to provide aid and empower the Black community.

Since our launch in June 2020, we have created free accessible educational resources, as well as compiled a National Resource Directory that includes information and direct connections to Black mental healthcare, Queer safe spaces, police reform, and a dozen other resources that save all Black Lives. We also have ignited our Freedom Fighters across the country to register voters in empower our Black and brown communities, as well as saved over $100,000 in federal funding for those communities by registering people for the 2020 census. We have hosted rallies, created a dozen pop-ups across the nation, and have been featured on NY1, CBS, and Playbill highlighting our campaigns and work.

GIVING TUESDAY CAMPAIGN

10/2021 UPDATE: Claim Our Food NOW replaces Project FROM

Funds previously fundraised for the now defunct initiative Project FROM will be allocated to community with COFood as described below. See the following description for the former COSpace initiative that has future thought leadership with former board member, Dimitri Moise.

Inspired by individual acts of generosity during the global pandemic, Project FROM will launch in 2021 with the mission of benefiting the most disadvantaged communities in New York and across the country. With a specific focus on mental health resources in the Black community,  prison reform, and  food & housing security, Project FROM will connect directly with communities in need to combat income inequality and white supremacy in BIPOC spaces to continue our work in protecting all Black lives through individual acts of philanthropy.

Often in our country, because of policies born from white supremacy and the oppression of marginalized communities, a single economic hurdle, such as the need for therapy or taking on the responsibility or care of a family member, can significantly and destructively alter the lives who seek freedom from the very forces that attempt to suppress that progress. For many individuals on the economic margin, small acts of restorative justice from Project FROM will significantly change the outlook of that work, and enrich broader communities, helping to realize the limitless potential of the human spirit across the country and around the world.

Claim Our Food Now

In 2022, we are looking forward to launching our new initiative, Claim Our Food Now, to provide consistent community care in the form of food security for NYC Caribbean immigrant families impacted by the threat of deportation.

We will donate culturally specific and nutritious foods to support their immediate needs while creating sustainable community programs to educate, motivate, and unionize our neighbors to abolish ICE and prevent further harm for future generations.

As we look toward the new year with hope, love, and resolve to continue our work to lift up BIPOC communities across the country, we are excited to launch our ongoing Giving Tuesday campaign. The money raised will be supporting Claim Our Space Now in our fight for freedom in 2022, specifically in launching our next initiative, Claim Our Food Now, which will support NYC Caribbean immigrant communities who face food insecurity due to the looming threat of detainment and deportation. With family members leads to a lessened quality of emotional and physical health on top of already existing financial hardships immigrants face in America.

With our initiative, Claim Our Food Now, we intend to create community lead programs to provide groceries and ensure the survival of our neighbors who immigrated from Haiti* impacted by lack of access to nutritious food until economic conditions allow them to purchase food at reasonable prices. With providers being stripped from their families, food insecurity runs rampant in immigrant communities alongside “cyclical patterns of poor health, unregulated employment [with poor working conditions], and severely limited access to health care and social services” (qtd. Carney & Krause, 2).

Through multi-action efforts over the course of 3 phases we will provide immediate and sustained support coupled with holistic abolitionist education that raises our immigrant communities’ consciousness and empowers all to claim their dignity and access to basic human needs. This can only happen with the abolition of ICE and punitive systems that degrade their means of living and instead give immigrants seeking asylum in the US the support they need to lead the better life America claims to provide.

We are so grateful for your generosity and belief in Claim Our Space Now, as we look forward to another year of educating, motivating, unionizing, and mobilizing our communities to fight for all Black lives and dismantling white supremacy.

Claim Our Space Now's Giving Tuesday

Join us as we launch our next initiative, Claim Our Food Now!

Team Members