Building Upon 25 Years of Power, Defense & Care!
DRUM was founded in 2000. We have come a long way from being an all-volunteer-run organization to now having staff and membership-driven chapters in six different neighborhoods in New York City! Over the course of two and a half decades, we’ve survived crisis after crisis brought upon by systemic attacks on our communities. We have leveled up our organizing and secured meaningful changes for our working class and mixed status immigrant communities.
We have built POWER - like the time that we helped each other survive through a pandemic by launching the Building Power & Safety Through Solidarity Campaign to forcing New York State to Fund Excluded Workers. This offered a lifeline for our communities who were left out of stimulus funds, even though our working class communities kept our city running at great health risk during COVID-19.
We have DEFENDED our communities - like when we shut down the NSEERS program that surveilled and tore apart our communities in the post 9/11 period. We launched community defense campaigns to free community members like Prakash, Shahina, and Ryan who were targeted by the state violence of police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
And we are grounded in the love and CARE we have for our communities. From supporting generations and generations of young people in our annual Summer Youth Organizing Institutes to backing the leadership of younger and older women through Eckshate Gender Justice. When our members have needed us, we have raised resources for people who have lost their homes or have had to bury their loved ones across hostile borders and distant oceans.
With the harsh conditions we are facing right now, we know our present moment compels us to move differently in our organizing. For our 25th year, DRUM is launching the "We Win Together: Building Centers of Community Power, Defense & Care" Campaign. The goals of this campaign are twofold:
- Raise $250,000 to advance our Community Defense and Power Building work;
- Dig deeper into our neighborhoods to defend ourselves against attacks on working class people and immigrants and build local networks of mutual aid, defense, care and collaboration.
We can't do this on our own because the only way we all win is together! We hope you will throw down with us to continue to do this important work!
Ways to Support
- Be a 25 x 25 Community Power Builder: Help us raise $25 from 25 of your loved ones and family.
- Be a DRUM Sustainer: Check recurring donations when you make your donation.
- Be a Chapter Builder: Engage with and support one of our chapters below.
