Eater NY

“What happened on Thursday is an example of city failure on several levels,” Mohamed Attia, the director of the Urban Justice Center’s Street Vendor Project, said in a statement. “The city has failed street vendors for decades and is still failing them till this moment.

CBS New York

"One out of five people go hungry every day, so this is really crazy for people, for community members to walk around and see,” said Mohamed Attia, director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center."

ABC 7 News

"Instead of giving her the opportunity to formalize her business, get a permit, she is being criminalized," said Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez of the Street Vendor Project [of the Urban Justice Center].”

The Spool

"Nicole Costa’s documentary about the life and times of poet, artist, friend, sex worker [and UJC Sex Worker Project client] Iván Monalisa is insightful and wry."

Vice

“While the purported target of the law [FOSTA/SESTA] was trafficking in the sex trades, it has proven incredibly ineffective but is instead invoked regularly by tech companies when censoring and removing content shared by sex workers, or even just users sharing content of a sexual nature,” Mariah Grant, Director of Research and Advocacy at The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center, told Motherboard.”

Chelsea News

Mack, who is a survivor of Rikers and a vehement activist in attempting to have the facility shut down, called the mayor’s response an “unacceptable betrayal of his promise to close Rikers and to implement the Renewable Rikers vision,” referring to de Blasio’s “failed approaches” to solving the crisis by expanding use of the jail and the role of the NYPD. Mack also called attention to the issue of judges and District Attorneys being allowed to “make a person’s freedom dependent on their wealth by setting bail amounts that function as ransom.”

PR Newswire

Change.org and New York-based community foundation, North Star Fund, announced more than 35 Black-led organizations across the United States that will receive grant funding from Change.org's $5.5 million Racial Justice Fund... The grant recipients [including the Freedom Agenda of the Urban Justice Center] work on the frontlines of Racial Justice to disrupt anti-black racism and empower communities of color.”

City Limits

“We’ve had stories of people telling us they’ve had to bend down and put their lips on the ground to suck air from under the door because it’s so hot and humid inside those cells that they’re literally sucking for cold air from the door from any cracks they can find,” said Brandon Holmes, of the Urban Justice Center.

Mashable

“Answering what is the best group is "a tricky question because many organizations that serve survivors are more localized,” says Kate D'Adamo, a long-time sex worker rights advocate who previously was the national policy advocate at the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, which works to destigmatize and decriminalize people in the sex trade. The best group may not have the best SEO on Google, and many anti-porn sex trafficking national groups take out ads on search platforms.”

WNYC

Freedom Agenda & MOCJ Task Force member Marco Barrios: "Most of the people that go to the city jails have a trauma, so they’re being re-traumatized because of the punitive model they have in place right now. And I lived that experience at one point, so I know firsthand about it. As a member of Freedom Agenda, we’ve tried to close Rikers Island to make sure there’s also accountability and oversight, and those things are lacking right now."