Yesterday’s People’s Budget Rally at City Hall

Katal Members, staff, and interns at the steps of City Hall, June 20, 2024
Yesterday, Katal joined the People’s Plan for a #PeoplesBudget rally at New York City Hall to demand a budget that invests in affordable housing, CUNY, childcare, libraries, education, and essential services on which New Yorkers depend, not the NYPD and the Department of Corrections. We stood in the heat with dozens of groups like the CUNY Rising Alliance, Housing Works, VOCAL-NY, and Youth Represent to ensure that the City Council hears our demands and fights with every disposable tool to restore Mayor Adams’s budget cuts and deliver a budget that offers dignity, care, and justice for everyone in New York City.
Check out photos from yesterday’s rally here. If you’d like to get involved in our #ShutRikers campaign and join us for a meeting with New York City Council members – and meet with your own council member –let us know. We will help! Just email Melanie at melanie@katalcenter.org.
Tabling Across Brooklyn to Shut Rikers

Katal summer fellow Aryss and summer intern Sara tabling at Brooklyn Heights Library, 6.17.24
This summer we are tabling at libraries across New York City. These public institutions play an important role in our communities and Mayor Adams is slashing their budgets while continuing to fund the NYPD and DOC excessively.
Today, we’re tabling at the Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (2 Linden Blvd. at, Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11226)! If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop by and chat with us from 1 to 5 p.m.!
On Monday, we held a tabling session at the Brooklyn Heights Library. We spoke with community members about the crisis on Rikers Island, and our campaign to CUT the jail population, SHUT down Rikers, and INVEST in true community safety: housing, health care, education, and jobs. We spoke with people impacted by Rikers and were able to connect them with our organizing efforts.
If you would like us to table at a library in your neighborhood, please contact Melanie, our organizing director, at melanie@katalcenter.org.
Katal in the News
- On Wednesday, our organizing director Melanie Dominguez joined “Black Agenda Report” to discuss the need to increase jail oversight across the state by expanding and strengthening the New York State Commission of Correction. Melanie discussed what happened at the end of session and next steps to getting legislation passed. Check out the full interview here or listen to it on WBAI here, starting at 31:37.
- On Tuesday, our organizing director, Melanie Dominguez, joined BronxNet TV to discuss the 2024 legislative session and the need to improve jail oversight and address the ongoing crises at local jails across the state, including the notorious and deadly Rikers Island jail complex. Watch the interview here.
- On June 6, the New York Amsterdam News published an op-ed by our co–executive director gabriel sayegh titled “Mayor Adams Talks About Closing Rikers While Working to Keep It Open.” In the piece, gabriel discusses Mayor Adams and the ongoing delays on the plan to close Rikers by 2027.
- On June 2, the New York Daily News published an op-ed, “NYS Must Boost Its Prison Watchdog,” by our advocacy director, Yonah Zeitz. He urged state legislators to act before the end of session and pass a bill (S5877A /A5709A) that will increase jail oversight.
Katal Quotes of the Week
These are some of the quotes we’re thinking about this week.
“You can’t separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” – Malcolm X
“If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.” — James Baldwin
“Today on Juneteenth, the day we celebrate the end of slavery, the day we memorialize those who offered us hope for the future and the day when we renew our commitment to the struggle for freedom.” — Angela Davis
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Katal works to strengthen the people, policies, institutions, and movements that advance equity, health, and justice. Join us: web, Twitter, Facebook! Email: info@katalcenter.org Phone: 646.875.8822.