A Brief Overview of My Participation With CANY

In the late 1980s I negotiated an affiliation agreement between LIPC and CANY, the result of which was to make the LIPC an autonomous local affiliate of CANY. LIPC assumed the responsibility of carrying out CANY projects on Long Island, and participating in the development of CANY’s statewide and national initiatives. Similar to CANY’s local chapters, LIPC received two positions on CANY’s statewide board, on which I served from then until 2019. In that role I sought to facilitate increasingly close coordination between the two organizations, until I found that organization diverging from my vision of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, inclusive progressive democratic organization.

I regularly attended statewide conferences, participated in planning processes, and participated in the process that gave birth to CANY’s national affiliate, US Action. I also participated actively, as both a CANY and LIPC board member, in the process that in 1998 gave birth to the Working Families Party of New York.