Put Power in People’s Hands – Not the State or Corporations

Too many New Yorkers feel powerless – over our own healthcare, our housing, our children’s schools, our safety, and our jobs. Instead of building genuine agency, our state too often substitutes coercion: forced treatment, landlord control, top-down school mandates, police impunity, and gig‑economy exploitation. We call on you to replace control with community power by taking these actions: 1. End forced psychiatric commitment – Reject the proposed “Compassionate Interventions Act.” Fund voluntary, peer‑led crisis support like the INSET program instead. 2. Keep people in their homes – Strengthen the Good Cause Eviction law without new loopholes. Pass the Community Land Act to help nonprofits buy land for permanently affordable housing. 3. Give students and teachers a real voice – Let school budgeting and curriculum decisions be made by democratic councils of students, teachers, and parents, not by distant bureaucrats. 4. Make police accountable to communities – Amend the Taylor Law so police discipline is no longer subject to union bargaining. Pass S04354 to give NYC’s civilian review board final disciplinary authority. 5. Build worker‑owned cooperatives – Pass S00648 to make worker co‑ops preferred bidders for state contracts. Create a grant fund to help gig workers buy out their platforms. We refuse a society that manages us from above. We demand the tools to shape our own lives – together.