It is with profound sadness we announce that Toby D'Oench, one of North Star's founders, passed away on Monday January 23, 2012 from complications related to his treatment for cancer.

Inspired by his experience working in Soweto, South Africa in the 1970s, Toby rode his motorcycle across the country in 1978 to spend six months working with colleagues (and his future spouse Tani) at the former Vanguard Foundation. He went to learn more about what was then a pioneering new model of philanthropy. He came back to New York City, and along with a small group of other founders, created North Star Fund in 1979. Toby's initial efforts, and his many years on North Star's staff, helped create an institution that is a lasting source of support for grassroots activists across the city working towards greater equality, a more just economy and a more peaceful world.

Hugh Hogan, North Star Fund's Executive Director, reflects that, "For everyone who Toby touched, in the North Star Fund community and beyond, it is a moment of profound sadness and reflection. Toby's vision, his self-deprecating nature, his kindness and his commitment will inspire us for a very long, long time. Personally, I have lost a mentor, and a critical but loving kitchen cabinet member who always answered my phone calls, my emails seeking advice, and our requests for support. Toby kept us grounded in the mission to organize people with wealth to direct resources to those directly affected by injustice. Our hearts go out to his family, close friends and colleagues.

Plans for a memorial service will be announced by his family in the days ahead.

Click here for more information and application instructions

There are three types of grants for which you may apply for in the Spring 2012 cycle:

• Grassroots Action Grants
• Innovative Activism Grants
• Grassroots Strategy Grants

We will hold a "How to Apply for an Innovative Activism Grant" workshop on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 from 5-7pm at the North Star Fund office. RSVP to (212) 620-9110 or walter@northstarfund.org.

To find out more information about our grantmaking guidelines, the upcoming workshop, and how to apply, please click here.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Occupy Wall Street spontaneously erupted one day. And that, soon thereafter, there were hundreds of fresh-faced college students and frustrated unemployed workers camping at Zuccotti Park, communicating via Facebook and human microphones. You'd be forgiven for thinking this because this is what most of us following the mainstream media accounts are led to believe.

The reality is less romantic, but more powerful for those who believe in the potential of community organizing to transform lives. The truth is that the Occupy Wall Street movement is the result of a marriage of forces: experienced organizers and the newly engaged, community-based organizations and labor unions, those who organize via social networking and those who organize via door-knocking. And right at the heart of it all are North Star grantees. North Star's grantees have laid considerable groundwork for the movement for economic justice in this age of extreme disparity of wealth. And they've been active participants in the events--in Zuccotti Park and beyond--that have come to be known as the Occupy Movement.

Sondra Youdelman, Executive Director of Community Voices Heard (CVH), a North Star grantee since 1997, tells of the origins of Occupy New York in a year-long effort to shift the debate about the local economy. "The government's message was that we need to cut and sacrifice, tighten our belts. Our membership said, 'Wait, we've been sacrificing all along.'" It was time to re-focus the public conversation away from which services to cut, and towards how to generate additional revenue.

VOCAL-NY, a North Star Fund grantee since 1999 that works to build power among people affected by HIV/AIDS, drug use and mass incarceration, was another early leader in the effort. According to Jeremy Saunders, VOCAL's lead organizer, "Our members are not one dimensional. We can protect HIV services, but what if the hospitals are closed? So we made the decision to step out of our silo and fight for a fair economy."

But how? The stakes were high. It was early 2011, and harsh state and local budgets were looming. "I remember this statewide leaders meeting at which Gloria Wilson, one of our member leaders, an African American woman in her 50's, stood up and said, 'We've just got to get Egypt on their asses,'" recalled Sondra.

So VOCAL and CVH along with others shut down the state capital in early March. Seventeen people were arrested. The protest made the headlines. "Even the reporters said, 'Wow, people don't do it like that,'" said Jeremy. The shutdown and subsequent collaborative actions around the state and city budgets helped to refine the message, excite the base, and solidify important institutional relationships. And so when the Occupy "moment" came, organizations like CVH, VOCAL-NY, Brandworkers, Make the Road New York, NICE, FUREE, and People's Production House--all North Star grantees--were ready.

The Power of 99%

The success of the movement has been attributed to the powerful slogan 'We are the 99%.' In its simplicity, this message about economic inequality has busted down the walls that have traditionally separated organizers working with extremely marginalized groups--like North Star grantees--from the broader public. "The fundamental frame of 99 versus 1 percent is so inclusive, and expresses so simply the frustration about inequality that people feel, that you can get on it in many different ways," said Daniel Coates, lead organizer for Make the Road New York, a North Star grantee since 1999.

For example, Occupy organizers invited Maria Corona, a board member at Brandworkers, a North Star grantee since 2007, to speak at the General Assembly about her struggles as an immigrant worker in food production--a sector where there is little enforcement of the few laws that do exist to protect the workforce. The very next day, Occupy protesters participated in huge numbers in a global call-in organized by Brandworkers to urge Tnuva, the world's largest kosher cheese company, to cut ties with its distributor, Flaum Appetizing, a chronic abuser of immigrant workers that illegally fired Maria and sixteen of her co-workers. More recently, organizations including CVH, VOCAL, Make the Road New York and others have hosted "Occupy the Block" conversations in which protesters head out to local communities to hear about how these issues hit on the ground.

Bringing the Movement Home

There is a commitment to partnership among the Occupy organizers, many of whom feel that they are part of a longer tradition. They know that to be truly representative of the 99%, they need the voices of those most marginalized in the communities of New York City. Working with North Star grantees and others, OWS has formed people of color and immigrant caucuses that allow for its members to share their firsthand experiences, articulate a vision, and lift up specific organizing campaigns that work towards that vision. In forging these ties, the Occupy base has grown beyond the physical space of Zuccotti Park.

Valery Jean is the executive director of Families United for Racial and Economic Justice (FUREE), which organizes to build power in low-income communities in downtown Brooklyn. FUREE sees the Occupy movement as an opportunity to promote economically fair and responsible development in the communities where its members live. According to Valery, "We've been to both community/labor marches. The last march across the Brooklyn Bridge really brought the Occupy movement home. Many of our members have gone through the civil rights movement, and they've said that they never thought they'd see this again in their lifetime."

Ultimately, the dilemma facing these organizers is how to seize the momentum provided by this compelling message while making sure that their specific priorities in areas including public housing, immigrant rights, workplace safety, public assistance, and HIV/AIDS supportive housing, don't get lost in the fold. "It's amazing what's going on and we need to continue to relate to it. And we need to know when to push our own, more specific, campaigns. No one else is going to work on 30% rent caps to protect 11,000 people living with AIDS from eviction and homelessness," said Jeremy of VOCAL.

But that's okay, according to the expert organizers in the North Star community who have been winning concrete victories for New York's poor and marginalized for decades. "What OWS is bringing up is systemic. This system ain't working for 99 percent of us," said Daniel Coates of Make the Road New York. "And I think it would be a mistake for OWS to begin to say, 'Well, we think that the United States government should pass x specific legislation.' The minute they start to put a stake in the ground, they lose the broader message and the imagination."

North Star's Role

Of course, it isn't a coincidence that the community-based organizations most involved in Occupy are part of the North Star community. As Jeremy Saunders puts it, "North Star has supported the organizations that have been most dedicated to engaging community members and taking advantage of political opportunities at the most strategic moments. Thankfully North Star is still there, creating spaces for us to talk about what we are doing now and what we should do in the future."

This space that North Star creates will be even more important now as the next steps of this movement are undecided. If the thousands of members from community organizations and labor unions that showed up to protest on November 17, two days after the eviction at Zuccotti Park, are any indication, the 99% aren't going anywhere any time soon.

I am truly honored to be a member of North Star Fund's Community Funding Committee and part of a grantmaking model that is activist-led and participatory. When it comes to making its grants, North Star Fund turns to the people who are working on the ground, who know the issues, and who bring the expertise of knowing firsthand what kind of change is needed. These leaders who sit on the Community Funding Committee run organizations whose members are most affected by systemic discrimination and injustice. Their perspective is invaluable.

If you asked me about whether it's best to fund a particular organization that you care about directly or North Star Fund, I would say do both! North Star has a deep understanding of the grassroots organizations in this city, and as a foundation they can provide other supports to them in addition to money: capacity building to develop their leadership, technical assistance to confront the challenges facing grassroots organizations, and the chance to be part of a larger convening of organizations thinking strategically about how to create change.

Once you choose to give to a public Fund, you make a choice as donor to give up some control--which is a healthy challenge to one's sense of individual expertise and privilege.  Having financial resources doesn't mean that you have a more intelligent or knowledgeable approach to funding effectively or powerfully. And while it's obvious to say that, so many of the traditional philanthropic models and donor relationships out there embody the opposite approach. North Star helps donors become more conscientious in their giving so that both the money they give and they way they give reflects their commitment to social justice.

When I came back to New York City four years ago, after several years away, it was great to find in North Star access to the world of grassroots and social justice organizations working to build change in my hometown. It's been inspiring to be back and contribute to the movement.

I've also greatly appreciated getting to know the staff over the years. They take their work really seriously. It's not just their day job. They are politically engaged in every aspect of their lives. North Star has this sense of humility. There are no pretenses. And that is not that common in this town.

These are the grants that we have made so far to support OWS activities:

National Lawyers Guild: $5,000
To coordinate legal representation of the over 900 people arrested so far at OWS-related protests in New York.

Movement for Justice in El Barrio: $5,000
To hold an "Encuentro for Humanity," a gathering to strategize on how participants of Occupy Wall Street, community members, and social justice organizations can best move forward together in this moment.

Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE): $2,500
To connect its membership to Occupy activities and to organize an Occupy Brooklyn event.

People's Production House: $1,500
To conduct media training with activists participating in OWS and to broadcast their stories to media outlets.

In 2012, we will continue to support a range of strategies to build and sustain the grassroots-led movement that preceded Occupy Wall Street, and we will support the Occupy movement itself.

For the 2011 North Star Fund Annual Report, members of our community contributed personal stories and artifacts emblematic of this foundation's mission and vision. The idea was to create a kind of time capsule to inspire future generations in their efforts to create a just and equitable society. The resulting collection conveys our community's shared values and vision, interwoven with personal stories and memories.

In addition, the annual report contains a list of last year's grants, social justice victories by our grantees, financial statements, and more.

Download the annual report

Should a company refuse to follow wage and labor laws because it employs undocumented immigrants? That's what Flaum Appetizing claims. And its employees are having none of it. Earlier this week, Brandworkers International, a North Star Fund grantee since 2007, announced a major victory for immigrant workers. Tnuva, a multi-billion dollar global company and by far the largest producer of kosher cheese, has been persuaded to stop using Flaum to distribute its dairy products to supermarkets and grocery stores in the New York City area.

The Flaum Campaign is part of Brandworkers "Focus on the Food Chain" initiative to organize workers in food preparation and distribution. The Flaum Appetizing factory and warehouse in Brooklyn represents one of too many "low-road companies" in this sector that undermine law-abiding employers, exploit immigrant workers of color, and jeopardize the sustainability of the food system. Using the Brandworkers member-led campaign model, Latina and Latino workers engaged in a determined effort to bring Flaum into compliance with the rule of law, including recovering $270,000 in illegally withheld wages and remedying the fierce retaliation the company has engaged in towards workers who sought to unionize.

More than 80 leading supermarkets, including Fairway, Zabar's, Food Emporium and the Park Slope Food Coop have refused to carry Flaum products until the company settles with the workers, but it took longer to persuade Tnuva to end its relationship with the company. Occupied Wall Street movement gave this effort added punch when as part of a day of action, a group from Occupied Wall Street visited Tnuva's Jersey City offices.

With Tnuva joining many other food industry leaders that will not do business with Flaum until it respects workers' rights, the company faces a powerful economic incentive to meet all legal obligations to its workers.

Here's a survey of news articles on the victory:

• NY Daily News, Kosher cheese giant Tnuva drops Brooklyn distributor Flaum accused of underpaying employees
• Crain's NY Business.com, Fired food workers gain measure of revenge
• DNAinfo.com, Kosher Food Distributor Severs Ties with Controversial Brooklyn Company

Philanthropy News Digest (PND), an online publication of the Foundation Center, recently interviewed Hugh Hogan, North Star Fund's executive director, for his take on the meaning and impact of Occupy Wall Street. The article is part of the PND's "Five Questions" series. In the article, Hugh makes the case for the roots of Occupy Wall Street in the work of our grantees and others working for social justice and equality. According to Hugh, "Thanks in part to those efforts [of North Star Fund's grantees], I can say with confidence that even before the emergence of Occupy Wall Street there was a broad-based understanding in New York City -- and the country as a whole -- that the system was failing too many people on the one hand while excessively rewarding people who put personal gain ahead of everything else on the other."

The interview goes on to explore the impact Occupy Wall Street, and how it can be a catalyst for progressive social change.

You can read the full article here.

Editor's note: As we go to press, VOCAL-NY has just won another much-lauded victory. Last week, after sustained pressure led by VOCAL, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly instructed police officers to stop arresting people for carrying small amounts of marijuana. These costly arrests profiled young Black and Latino men in the poorest neighborhoods. The following article explores the ongoing work of VOCAL-NY, and their several other recent victories.

Entering through the front door of their Brooklyn headquarters, the visitor takes in the sights and sounds of VOCAL's small army of constituent-activists, sitting around a conference table, at work on their own behalf.  The stories of their lives are complex; many are former drug users, or struggling with homelessness, have been incarcerated, and affected by HIV. Others are the family members of someone lost to the AIDS epidemic, who pledged to their loved one that they would carry on the fight to end the stigma and devastating health effects of the epidemic. They are there to engage and be engaged. What preparation is demanded for the next trip to press Albany lawmakers about their issues and concerns? Who are allies on this trip? Who in their circle is in need of food or medicine?

These are essential aspects of Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL). "And they're extremely important," said George Bethos, 52, a founder of what, until last year, was the New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN), an organization launched in the late 1990.  "Before VOCAL, we'd had so little say in all kinds of decisions, politically, in the medical system, all the bureaucracies that affect the community.   All kinds of decision about our lives were being made by people who in many cases were very well intentioned, who had more degrees than a thermometer but had not actually lived the life."

VOCAL Speaks Up

VOCAL members have all felt firsthand the impact of being silenced. And they have fought back, winning victories that have gained state and national attention: A 2000 law expanded access to clean syringes to prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C by allowing drug users to pick them up at pharmacies without a prescription.    A 2003 FBI investigation and National Public Radio coverage of the illegal placement of those with HIV/AIDS in halfway homes run by a slumlord.  In partnership with other housing advocacy groups, the 2006 Safe Housing Act, which grants the right to immediate repairs to hazard-laden housing where the slumlords have been unresponsive.

In the ongoing budget-tightening of this Great Recession--when some lawmakers are more bent on shoring up Wall Street than the Average Janes--VOCAL has dared to confront the politicians head-on. "A New York Times article called them hecklers. "I would call them patriots, heroes, she-roes," said Hugh Hogan, North Star Fund's executive director. "This is the kind of group that makes our democracy what it is. They proudly go to places that others fear. They don't patronize. They don't judge. They build confidence and power. They have an incredible analysis of the powerful and the disenfranchised."

VOCAL's persistence, coupled with its results-driven, constituents-as-leaders movement building has made it a valued grassroots institution whose work  North Star has been proud to support since VOCAL's founding in 1999. The foundation's longstanding support  is prompted by VOCAL's finesse at rallying low-income communities facing the intersecting issues of HIV-AIDS, intravenous drug-use, imprisonment--and a society that can be wholly inhospitable, if not outright hostile, to those affected by that trifecta of issues. "We've seen VOCAL emerge brilliantly as a major leader on issues where there's a lot stigma," Hogan said. "These are issues that most people in American society don't want to take on."

Last year, VOCAL  was selected to be among the first five recipients of North Star's new Movement Leadership grant. These two-year, $25,000 grants are the cornerstone of the foundation's new grantmaking strategy. The grants include a peer-learning program, designed to get community organizing groups talking and working together, as well as sharpening their own work.  According to Walter Barrientos, North Star Fund's program officer, "VOCAL  works at an incredible fast-pace, with a far-reaching strategy. In their campaigns, they target all of the decision-makers, instead  of -- for instance-- one agency, or one senator.  Within the Movement Leadership peer group, VOCAL  pushes other groups to a new understanding of their capacity, and what is possible to achieve."

This year, North Star Fund honored VOCAL with a Frederick Douglass award at the foundation's  Community Gala in May. The honor came on the heels of a year with three major victories that VOCAL achieved in 2010:

1. They won a law expanding access to syringes to prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C, and requiring education for law enforcement.
2. In the legislature, they passed an affordable housing protection bill for 10,000 low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and their families at risk for homelessness. (Governor Paterson vetoed the legislation, but the fight continues.)
3. They ended prison-based gerrymandering in New York, which undermined the principle of one person, one vote, in coalition with Citizen Action, the Prison Policy Project, the Voter Enfranchisement Project, and others.

VOCAL'S Strategy Is Multi-pronged

By necessity, VOCAL's advocacy has involved the broad set of AIDS-, prison- and drug war-related challenges that its constituent-members confront.  "Racial and gender inequalities, from the disproportionate incarceration of blacks and Latinos for drug offenses to discrimination against LGBT people within the healthcare system," are infused in the issues that VOCAL takes on, said Sean Barry, 29, VOCAL's executive director since late 2007. "For example, in white communities, drug use is more often dealt with as a public health instead of a criminal justice issue."

Not so if you're of color, as are 90 percent of VOCAL's 1,000 active members, people mainly concentrated in New York City's five boroughs, Westchester County and Albany. (Statewide, VOCAL estimates that there are 150,000 people living with HIV/AIDS and over 200,000 injection drug users. ) Not so if you're poor, sick, lack sufficient health insurance or money for rent. Adding the stigma of a prison sentence--and the formerly incarcerated are a core part of VOCAL--further adds to the complexities. "You put your 10, 20 years in and you ought to be able to come out with a clean slate. But you don't," said Wayne Starks, 61, a VOCAL board member.

Against the backdrop of those myriad concerns, VOCAL regularly shuttles members to Albany and Washington, D.C., to make their case.  (Last March, 10 VOCAL members were arrested, along with members of Community Voices Heard (CVH) while insisting that New York legislators "Put the people before Wall Street.") Their lobbying included telling Gov. Andrew Cuomo that, budget shortfalls aside, his proposed cuts would push many of them and others who fit their profile deeper into the shadows. Even before the present round of budget cuts, VOCAL had been pushing for such initiatives as voting rights for formerly incarcerated people; affordable housing, including a measure that precludes those with AIDS who get government rent subsidies from paying more than a third of their income in rent (for some, 80 percent of their disability checks now go toward rent); more ready access to clean syringes for heroin addicts (widely recognized as one of the most effective forms of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C prevention); immunity from prosecution for those who report a drug overdose.

And for good measure, members have said, how about some common decency on the part of the welfare caseworkers with whom many members must interact as they inch toward becoming more productive citizens? "Sticking to a plastic chair for 10 hours a day while trying to get Medicaid or a $150 in food stamps--it's such a degrading, exhausting system," Bethos said. "Some people say 'screw it,' and instead do pretty crimes, boosting, small drug sales ... unfortunately, trading sex. Particularly the women are vulnerable to really serious consequences of doing that."

"Poverty and homelessness," executive director Barry said, "are the major drivers of the HIV epidemic, and both of those factors are closely tied to structural racism in this country.  When people are unable to meet basic needs like housing or food, it makes it difficult for people to focus on taking medication, visiting the doctor or practicing safer sex."

He continued: "The impact of poverty on the epidemic plays out in lots of different ways.  For example, it's harder for poor women to negotiate safe sex when they're financially reliant on male partners who refuse to use a condom or because they fear getting kicked out of the house."

VOCAL Empowers

VOCAL is all about ramping up the dialogue, said Wanda Hernandez, 48, another member on VOCAL's board. "I'm HIV positive. I just felt that some of us needed to step up," she said. "I've always been an outspoken individual but I've found a way to use that power, to use my voice in the community and for the community. I'm a part of VOCAL because it has made me who I am today."

That Hernandez feels this sense of pride and call to action reflects the solidarity within VOCAL, said Barry, who, in his youth, got sent to rehab for his drug use while his black friends, from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., went to jail. "I eventually started to get radicalized around those kinds of things," he added.

VOCAL's members have trod their own path into social justice advocacy. "Being judged and stigmatized underlies all their experiences," Barry said. That commonality is "one of the reasons we have people from extremely different walks of life collaborating and struggling together. We've got people from the city's poorest neighborhoods who've spent most of their lives locked up working side by side with white, gay men from Chelsea or the Village who used to have good jobs -- and then both of those groups working alongside women from Brooklyn and the Bronx who've had an extremely hard time in other ways. It doesn't mean racism or sexism or homophobia doesn't come up and create challenges, but people are committed to putting those issues at the forefront of our work internally as well as externally.  People build community in an organic, member-driven way."