As New York City general elections approach and candidates articulate their plans in regard to Rikers Island, the Campaign to #CloseRikers issued this statement.
🗳️ Stay tuned for our Voter Guide coming next week.
5/ While we mark the milestone of The Boat’s permanent emptying & demolition, we call on the next Mayor to finish the job by permanently closing every one of the Rikers Island jails. In Edwin’s words, “It’s time to put them out of existence.” #CloseRikers
4/ “The mayor constantly speaks about the amount of people with mental health challenges incarcerated,” said Cynthia Acevedo, whose brother Gregory died on The Boat in 2022. “He should get them into treatment, and divert them from incarceration in the first place." #CloseRikers
3/ Our organizer Edwin Santana, who was detained on The Boat and Rikers, said in 2022, “Both are filled with people who have been failed by our s social safety net, who are then subjected to conditions that no human being should have to endure.” www.norwoodnews.org/op-ed-why-th...#CloseRikers
2/ Our member Lezandre Khadu, whose son died on The Boat in 2021, said on hearing of The Boat’s final demise, “I can tell people now: If we continue fighting, things will get better. It's proof it actually is happening.” #CloseRikershellgatenyc.com/scrapping-fl...
1/ WE DID IT! Through the continued organizing of from impacted people and allies, the Vernon C. Bain Center aka “The Boat,” the jail barge is being sold for scrap and removed permanently from our city. gothamist.com/news/nycs-fl...#CloseRikers
Listen to our Community Organizer Edwin Santana and Co-Director Sarita Daftary discuss closing Rikers and our vision for collective empowerment on the podcast War Cry for Our Children!
"I felt so helpless trying to advocate for my son to people who didn’t seem to care if he lived or died. Ultimately, [DOC] carelessness killed him, and the only thing worse than knowing that is that [Rikers] continues to kill more people." - Freedom Agenda Member Lezandre Khadu #CloseRikers
Join us on October 9th as we celebrate 5 years of advocacy, organizing, and community power! Let's celebrate how far we've come and raise funds we need to go even further. wl.donorperfect.net/weblink/webl...
"[This decision] affirms what community advocates have been saying for years: Rikers is a place of violence and human suffering, and allowing ICE to prey on people there only deepens the harm." - Freedom Agenda Co-Director @iamdarrenmack.bsky.social #CloseRikers www.amny.com/police-fire/...
STATEMENT from our Co-Director Darren Mack @iamdarrenmack.bsky.social after the twelfth tragic loss of life in DOC custody this year. #CloseRikers#Decarcerate#HumanRights
Following their weeklong advocacy events, @freedomagendany.bsky.social has released an updated publication, Countdown to Closing Rikers Policy Brief. with ‘key next steps’ for New York City to follow through on the legal and moral obligation to close Rikers, by 2027
August 31 marks two years until the legal deadline to #CloseRikers. Erasing this stain on our City will bring joy, relief, and hope to so many New Yorkers. ✴️Please share this video to tell Mayor Adams and our next administration we need action NOW to #GetRikersClosed www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTrg...
Last night on NY1 with @errollouis.bsky.social our Co-Director Darren Mack spoke out about the human rights crisis at #Rikers and the urgent need to #CloseRikers once and for all. People are suffering and dying in a system that must be dismantled. The time to act is now. ny1.com/nyc/all-boro...
Join us TODAY at 12:30PM for a Phone Zap to Free Our People, as part of our week of action marking two years from the legally mandated deadline to #CloseRikers by August 31, 2027. bit.ly/closerikers-827
STATEMENT from our Co-Director @iamdarrenmack.bsky.social after the tenth tragic loss of life in DOC custody this year. #CloseRikers#Decarcerate#HumanRights
📣JOIN US AT 11AM with faith partners from the Campaign to #CloseRikers to learn about the historic work of David Ruggles in opposition to Richard Riker's Kidnapping Club, and his organization, the New York Committee of Vigilance! bit.ly/closerikers-814
“Public safety is not just about policing, enforcement, incarceration...The other side of public safety is when you provide people with opportunity to rebuild their lives, when you connect them.” - Stanley Richards @thefortunesociety.bsky.social#JISH#CloseRikerscitylimits.org/funding-boos...
📣JOIN US AT 11AM with faith partners from the Campaign to #CloseRikers to learn about the historic work of David Ruggles in opposition to Richard Riker's Kidnapping Club, and his organization, the New York Committee of Vigilance! bit.ly/closerikers-814
Our member Tamara Carter, whose son Brandon Rodriguez died at Rikers: "[DOC] were notified almost immediately that we wanted his things by my lawyer...his items were destroyed. When I had the chance to help [with] this bill, I was absolutely going for it." #CloseRikers
Edwin Quispe became the ninth person to die this year in NYC Department of Corrections custody, or shortly after their release, when staff found him unresponsive while being held on Rikers Island.
Darren Mack & Damon Gilbert on an underused way to reduce the # of ppl at Rikers: "The 6A early release program...allows individuals sentenced to less than a year to serve the remainder of their time at home, supported by re-entry programs." #CloseRikerswww.nydailynews.com/2025/08/04/b...
ACT NOW and tell Mayor Adams he must protect the human rights of all New Yorkers by reducing incarceration TODAY to improve safety in our city and in the jails and advance the closure of Rikers! bit.ly/ActNowCloseR...#CloseRikers
And from our senior organizer Ashley Abadia Santiago: “People who talk about the borough jail plan as an expansion are either deliberately lying, or they’re revealing how invisible the sprawling capacity of Rikers is to them.” #CloseRikerscitylimits.org/opinion-boro...
Words from our member Victor Herrera who was detained at the Tombs: “The replacement borough jails are also just one piece of a much larger plan – to transform both our approach to public safety and the way New York City’s jails are operated.” #CloseRikerswww.amny.com/opinion/op-e...
