LOCAL ACTION COMMITTEE

For generations, the South Bronx has been a place where ordinary people have done extraordinary organizing.

From the Young Lords occupying the old Lincoln Hospital in the 70s to neighbors defending community gardens in the 90s to residents fighting environmental racism today, our power has always come from coming together.

The same spirit that pushed the Young Lords to demand dignity, healthcare, and clean streets is the same spirit that drives us now.

We believe that our lives, our health, and our future are worth fighting for.

History of Community Organizing In the South Bronx

  • 1960s

    Residents come together and turn abandoned lots into community gardens throughout the South Bronx.

  • 1970

    Reacting to the poor conditions at the Lincoln Hospital, The Young Lords march into Lincoln Hospital and staged a nonviolent takeover in 1970. This intervention had lasting effects for the community and led to the formation of new social justice and health-focused initiatives within the South Bronx.

  • 1970s-80s

    Non-profits throughout the South Bronx form, like the Citizens Advice Bureau (now BronxWorks), in response to widespread poverty and lack of social services. These organizations provided vital support amid systemic neglect.

  • 2012

    In response to the city and state agreeing to place another truck-intensive industrial business, FreshDirect, on the South Bronx waterfront, neighbors come together in protest. After this fight, neighbors form South Bronx Unite.

  • 2023

    After ten years of advocacy, South Bronx Unite creates the Local Action Committee, inviting a new space for environmental advocacy and grassroots movement building.

The Local Action Committee Is Where We Write The Next Chapters

It’s where the legacy of organizing in the South Bronx continues.

We meet every month, and all South Bronx residents and allies are welcome.

The LAC is a space where we:

  • Share what we’re seeing in our neighborhoods

  • Plan and coordinate direct actions

  • Respond to urgent and long-term threats facing the South Bronx

  • Get your feedback and ideas on what work needs to be done in our community

  • Build strategies for long-term change

SEE UPCOMING EVENTS

From air pollution and health, to green space and climate resilience, we know that nothing in our community exists in isolation.

The LAC brings people together to understand these intersections and move in unity.

To solve the systemic problems facing us, we must come together.

Past and Present Local Action Committee Initiatives

Some meetings, we debate city initiatives and how they’ll affect the South Bronx. Other times, we strategize on what we want to do with a vacant lot.

Every Local Action Committee meeting centers on listening, learning, and taking action together. The people most affected by issues in our neighborhoods are the ones who should shape solutions. At South Bronx Unite, we use the tools we have to bring those visions to life.

From reimagining public spaces to planning clean air campaigns, each discussion turns ideas into concrete steps that strengthen our community and expand what’s possible when neighbors organize as one.

Community Visioning Sessions

As we began creating our vision for the Mott Haven-Port Morris Waterfront Plan and for the HEArts Center (Health, Education, and the Arts), we did not make the plans behind closed doors.

We built them with you.

Through our land trust, The Community Land Stewards, we are able to secure land and use it for public good. But that’s impossible without your input.

At the Local Action Committee, we have generated ideas for…

  • The Waterfront

  • The HEArts Center programming

  • The Major Deegan Underpass

  • The Abandoned 40th Precinct Building and Parking Lot

  • The 139th St Lot

Shaping the Clean Air Program

So many of our LAC discussions come back to the one of the pressing needs of the people in the South Bronx: a demand for clean air.

LAC meetings have helped us decide where to put our air quality monitors, what our stance should be on congestion pricing, and how we can give away the most air purifiers to residents for the lowest costs.

Our work to support cleaner air in the South Bronx is impossible without those who are most affected taking the lead to do this work with us.

Direct Action and Advocacy

We can only build power together.

Through the Local Action Committee, we bring South Bronx advocates into the same room, onto the same streets.

Sometimes that’s in-person, like when two dozen of us testified at Lincoln Hospital in favor of the HEArts Center.

Other times, it’s about organizing to give input on government projects that affect us, like when 40 of us told the Department of City Planning that to include the community’s waterfront in their plan, or when we advocated against a new jail in the South Bronx.

Political and Civic Education

Voter turnout in the South Bronx is often some of the lowest in the city.

Through the Local Action Committee, we’re working to change that.

Though electoral politics is not the answer to all our challenges, it is an important avenue and expression of our power. Together, we can vote in candidates who represent our interests and hold them accountable.

Through discussion and debate, we give the space for residents to share their experience, and connect the dots between local issues—like housing, health, and public space—and bigger systems that have shaped life in the South Bronx.

Our work includes discussions on the importance of voting, neighborhood campaigns to help residents register, and grassroots initiatives that grow out of the LAC, like a bi-monthly political education book club.