Since 1999, VOCAL-NY has been building power to end AIDS, the drug war, mass incarceration & homelessness.
Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL-NY) is a statewide grassroots membership organization that builds power among low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, the drug war, mass incarceration, and homelessness in order to create healthy and just communities. They accomplish this through community organizing, leadership development, advocacy, direct services, participatory research and direct action.
Vision
VOCAL-NY is building a movement of low-income people dedicated to ending the AIDS epidemic, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and homelessness. They fight for systemic change rooted in justice, equity, and love. They approach this work with a firm belief in reducing harm and ending stigma, and the knowledge that the issues impacting their communities are driven by institutional oppression, not personal failings. Their campaigns have saved or improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers across the state.
Their model of movement building draws inspiration from three traditions: (1) traditional community-based organizing, (2) direct-action AIDS activism, and (3) Black-led social movements for racial justice. Above all, they work with the knowledge that abolishing systemic poverty and injustice will only be done by building the leadership and power of the most marginalized among them.
History
VOCAL-NY, then known as NYCAHN (The New York City AIDS Housing Network), was founded in 1999 by Jennifer Flynn, Joe Bostic and Jose Capestany as a progressive AIDS housing network.
While many people believed that the HIV/AIDS crisis ended with the availability of new medication in the mid-90s, the reality is that the epidemic was becoming more and more concentrated in low-income communities of color, which made it difficult for those being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS to benefit from treatment advances. Thei members always recognized that HIV/AIDS was not an isolated health issue but rather a symptom of institutional injustices rooted in race, gender and economic inequalities. Over the years, their organization evolved by expanding their efforts beyond winning treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS to addressing the root causes of the epidemic, like homelessness and incarceration.
NYCAHN became VOCAL-NY in 2010 to better reflect their multi-issue, multi-constituency organizing work in New York’s most marginalized communities.
