Paloma (she/her) is a dynamic and thought provoking community organizer who is an unapologetic truth and justice seeker. She has been at the forefront of the housing movement in New York City since 2016. Building community in Uptown Manhattan on housing, immigration, and racial justice issues with her neighbors. She is rooted in her love for Black liberation and a revolution filled with music, art, and dance. She is proud to be participating in the STUDY. PLAY. ACT peer-to-peership with the Shape of Cities to Come Institute in 2023 and 2024, funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Avi (he/him) is an educator, organizer, and researcher based in Washington Heights. He has been a participant in the New York City tenants movement since a women of color-led rent strike in his building in Winter 2013. In the years since, he has organized in many different contexts--faith-based, neighborhood-based, legislative, direct action, and more--to strengthen tenants and to build alternatives to exploitative private ownership. Avi is also proud to be participating in the STUDY. PLAY. ACT peer-to-peership with the Shape of Cities to Come Institute in 2023 and 2024, funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Chris (they/them) is a community organizer and land steward. In the mid 2010s, they helped build the graduate worker union at NYU while completing a doctorate in ethnomusicology. Starting in 2015, Chris collaborated with dozens of organizers uptown to challenge the predatory Inwood rezoning. Their background in labor, housing, and community organizing opened doors for them to serve for three years as Deputy Chief of Staff for State Senator Robert Jackson from 2019 through 2021. Since then, Chris has studied agriculture on farms throughout the Hudson Valley in preparation for founding Finca Seremos, a food justice project to grow fresh, organic, nutrient-dense produce for our community in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx.

Paul (he/him) is co-chair of Inwood Legal Action, which sued to block the 2018 Inwood rezoning. With the Racial Impact Study Coalition, he helped write and negotiate Local Law 78 of 2021, mandating the Equitable Development Data Explorer that provides easy access to a wide range of community data, and a Displacement Risk Map, for use by residents and activists across NYC, including data the City refused to provide in past rezonings. LL 78-2021 also mandates Racial Equity Reports on larger land use actions; the City’s refusal to study racial impact was an Inwood lawsuit claim. Paul helped start NMCLT and participated in NYCCLI’s CLT Learning Exchange. Since the 1970s, Paul has worked for communities from inside government (e.g., HUD and two NYC mayor’s offices), as a consultant to community coalitions, and as an activist. His 2006 book Results That Matter focuses on integrating community engagement with what gets measured, decided, and improved. He has an engineering degree from MIT.