CTCORE-Organize Now!

Mission

CTCORE-Organize Now! is dedicated to building communities of racial justice freedom fighters to dismantle systemic and structural racism in the state of Connecticut. We achieve our mission through a three-pillared movement building strategy and combine local base building (through our chapters) with issue-focused statewide network building.

About Our Platform

In January 2017, CTCORE called a meeting for organizers, educators, artists, healers, and more – people of color from various corners of Connecticut. The purpose of this meeting was to begin a process to develop a statewide agenda or platform, centered on the shared experiences of Connecticut residents of color. This Platform would then be used to create and coordinate strategies for racial justice movement building, centering the leadership of Connecticut residents of color.

This Racial Justice Platform Network (RJPN) met monthly from January to June in Bridgeport, Hamden, New Haven, and Hartford. For 6 months, the RJPN focused on and discussed the values for which the Platform and subsequent racial justice/equity work must be rooted in. In July, we drafted our Racial Justice Platform Values Statement.

During the months of August and September, we organized four public, participatory forums – open to all Connecticut residents. The four forums were based on our four racial justice categories - Criminal Justice Reform, Education Equity, Economic Justice, and Environmental Justice/Health Equity. They were held in the four cities where CTCORE prioritized establishing local, resident-led chapters in 2017 – Waterbury, New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford.

At these forums, members, supporters, and those new to CTCORE were introduced to CTCORE’s story, mission and purpose, our racial justice pillars (Community Organizing, Training, and Community Building) and the three frames through which this platform would be organized – Reparations, Current Systemic Inequity, Building New Systems and Institutions. Participants of these forums would help us identify and explore issues related to our four racial justice categories through the frames mentioned above (e.g. issues related to Criminal Justice Reform that call for reparations, equity in a current context, and/or community-driven alternatives).

Our Racial Justice Platform Network reconvened to study the information gathered during the Summer Forums. They analyzed and prioritized the issues and solutions put forth through the lens of our values statement. The result of the 9-month effort is the following CTCORE Racial Justice Platform.

Values Statement

"We affirm and we have a right to affirm our humanity and the necessity of our liberation. We have a right to environments that likewise affirm our humanity and our liberation. We have a right to define both."

"Racism, white supremacy, and antiBlackness are polluting our environments. These pollutants have been weaponized to oppress and exploit Black people and other people of color in the U.S. for centuries, to decimate our communities, and to stymie any real opportunities for full equity and equality. This weaponization began when the first slave ships stole Africans from the Gold Coast and when the first European colonizers stole land from and attempted genocide against the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Through these actions, our ancestors’ freedoms were stolen and, simultaneously, their struggle for liberation began."

"Despite the efforts of our ancestors, racism, white supremacy, and antiBlackness continue to oppress, evolve, and embed themselves within the fabric of American society. We can see the legacy of these forces in mass incarceration and police brutality, the school-to-prison pipeline and lack of resources for schools, generational poverty and discriminatory housing policies, and the high mortality rate that results from preventable diseases and insufficient health care, among other places. By challenging racism’s hold, we seek to realize our ancestors’ dream of liberation and to reclaim their freedom as well as our own."

"In order to attain freedom, we must heal our communities and prevent further harm. Our aim in organizing is to repair ourselves and our communities and to secure future generations from racist violence of all kinds. We have a right to define what our liberation looks like and to fight for it until we deem that it has been realized. We assert that reparations are necessary compensation for the physical and psychological exploitation that Black people and other people of color have faced, as well as compensation for being shut out of opportunities for prosperity that are predicated on that exploitation. These reparations must be paid in full in order for our future liberation and the liberation of this nation to be possible."

"CTCORE--Organize Now! is committed to eliminating all systemic racial inequities in Connecticut. We use four racial justice categories--criminal justice reform, education equity, economic justice, and environmental justice/health equity--as a framework for identifying policy reforms for addressing racial disparities. We demand that all public officials adopt our platform and invite all justice-minded Connecticut residents to join us in realizing this vision."

REAL (Reparations, Equity, and Liberation) Organizing Frames

• Reparations – We recognize that identifying measures to heal from the harms of structural racism is an essential component of racial justice work. We also recognize that reparations are necessary for addressing past, present, and all harm that may occur before this work is complete.
• Equity (Addressing Current Systemic Inequity) – We recognize that all of our systems are rooted in oppression, inequity and injustice. They are designed to harm Black people, other people of color and other marginalized communities. Harm reduction is often confused with liberation work. Our work dealing with current systemic inequity is about mitigating and ceasing that harm. Systems and institutions which are rooted in the oppression of our people, do not have the capacity to support our liberation.
• Liberation (Building New Systems and Institutions) – We recognize that the systems and institutions capable of affirming and embracing our humanity and liberation must be envisioned and built by us. We are identifying and putting in place the conditions to make the construction of just systems and institutions possible.

***** We acknowledge that it is necessary to organize through all three of these frames, simultaneously, in order to finally liberate us all from the long and pervasive history of racism and white supremacy. *****

Organizing Structure

Dismantling systemic racism and eliminating systemic racial inequities and disparities is the foundation of CTCORE’s purpose. We have a 3-pillared approach to racial justice/equity work: Community Building, Training and Community Organizing. 

Community Organizing - We firmly believe in the efficacy of community organizing as a means of building political power to enact social change. CTCORE (Community Organizing for Racial Equity) organizes statewide, at the grassroots level to push racial justice policies at the local and state levels. We have identified four racial justice categories as our focus: Criminal Justice Reform, Education Equity, Economic Justice & Environmental Justice/Health Equity. 

Training - CTCORE-Organize Now! Is dedicated to building a culture of racial justice community organizing by supporting and training a network of grassroots leaders who are committed to dismantling institutional racism. Our pillars of Training is about equipping POC leaders to do this work (including skills building, racial justice analysis and more).

Community Building - Building bonds of unity and trust, creating spaces for healing and building the conditions for liberation. Community building is both a separate pillar and the life-blood that runs through every aspect of our work.