Politics
An Advocate for Domestic Workers Wins the Just Brooklyn Prize
Christine Yvette Lewis is a coordinator for Domestic Workers United, a coalition that campaigns for labor rights for household employees.
Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll meet the winners of the Just Brooklyn Prize, who will receive no-strings-attached checks for $20,000. We’ll also find out how a man who’s in prison in New York could sway a House race in Alaska.
Credit…Christine Yvette Lewis
Christine Yvette Lewis says there were times in the last 10 years when she paid the rent for the space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that Domestic Workers United uses for its monthly meetings.
The group is a coalition that organizes grass-roots campaigns for labor rights for housekeepers, nannies and companions for older people. As its culture outreach coordinator, Lewis has a title but draws no salary. “We got grants along the way,” she said, but before they came through, she sometimes paid for the space “out of my own pocket.”
“I did that unseen,” she said.
But her work did not go unnoticed, and now she has been named one of five winners of the Just Brooklyn Prize for 2024.
She and each of the other four recipients will receive no-strings-attached checks for $20,000 from the Social Justice Fund, a nonprofit started by Clara Wu Tsai, who owns the New York Liberty with her husband, Joe Tsai. They also own the Brooklyn Nets. The awards are administered by the Social Justice Fund and Brooklyn.org, which changed its name from Brooklyn Community Foundation last year and channels grants to other nonprofits to deal with immediate crises and longer-range projects.
