Project Hajra

Work

Although Project Hajra is local to Queens, NYC, our long term vision for change is rooted and echoed in “transformative justice” work across the country. To paraphrase Mia Mingus: “transformative justice is a practice to work collectively and act when there is a crisis related to gender injustice, develop collective strength for future situations, and work to dismantle systems of oppression that perpetuate gender injustice in our communities and larger scale.”

We understand that our communities will not be safe unless we address root causes of violence. In bi- weekly meetings, we generate questions that form our social justice vision, including:

• What does safety mean to us?
• What are the root causes of violence?
• How can we better show up for each other in times of crisis, and plan for future crises?
• What aspects of state violence impact personal relationships and violence in the home?
• What does community defense look like?

Through these conversations, we have generated a list of outcomes that must be met in order to free our communities from interpersonal and state violence:

• Abolition of prison/police
• Secure and affordable housing
• Secure employment that fits with our needs, including caregiving
• Affordable/free childcare
• Increased trust in others (both inside and outside community)
• Training in bystander intervention and community defense
• Ongoing support and collaboration in response to racial profiling, police brutality, and anti-immigrant violence
• Spaces for healing and gathering

Since March 2020, we have shifted to mostly virtual spaces and are supporting a mutual aid network with Centro Corona and Queens Neighborhoods United.

From the beginning, we decided we wanted this network to provide ongoing, support to the community, and not just one-time support. 

Since March 13, our network started with 12 families, now we’ve been able to support around 300 people (85 families) consistently with weekly grocery and medicine deliveries, and have been able to support 35 families with rent and financial support. We also have a phone banking team working to check in with those 150 families weekly to see how they’re doing and if any needs arise, like connecting them to legal advice. 

We’ve also been able to offer telemedicine, teletherapy, death & grief support and family virtual hangouts. We’ve been able to do this because of how connected our communities are & we are grateful, while also holding on to the fact that this system was never meant to care for any of our people. 

Our families are facing urgent needs as folks have lost their income, while that does not prioritize low-income, undocumented, uninsured folks. As you can see, this network is growing extremely fast and we are responding quickly to the crises that are continuing to arise. We are also strategizing long term to provide political education related to abolition and transformative systems and recognize this mutual aid network as a way to abolition instead of a “stop gap”.

Here are videos that encapsulate our outlook on mutual aid.