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New York State Council of Churches

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New York State Council of Churches

NYSCOC is a statewide organization of Christian denominations working on social justice & institutional pastoral care. www.nyscoc.org

07/15/2026

Yesterday was a full day of advocacy, partnership, and community engagement across New York State!

We began the day in Brooklyn at the Refinery at Domino, joining the Governor’s Office of Faith and Nonprofit Development. NYSCOC Executive Director Rashida Tyler and Board Member Rev. Dr. Terry T***a represented the Council as Governor Kathy Hochul signed a one-year moratorium on new data center construction.

The moratorium will give communities time to develop appropriate regulations, consult with residents, and determine whether data centers should be built in their neighborhoods—and, if so, what meaningful benefits companies should provide to the communities hosting them.

Later that evening, we traveled to Rochester, where Executive Director Rashida Tyler joined Senator James Sanders Jr. during his Western New York Tour. NYSCOC was also represented by Rev. Dr. William Wilkinson. We are grateful to Bishop Rev. Dwight Fowler and First Church of God in Christ in Rochester for hosting this important community conversation.

Join us tomorrow, Thursday, July 16, from 5:00–7:00 p.m. at People’s AME Zion Church in Syracuse as we continue the conversation with Senator Sanders on reparations, small-business development, and concerns affecting Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises.

Come out, make your voice heard, and help shape the future of our communities!

07/04/2026

Celebrating the richness of our diversity.

06/24/2026

✨ Thank You for an Incredible 2026 Faith-Based Affordable Housing Summit! ✨

The Partnership for Faith-Based Affordable Housing and Community Development is deeply grateful to everyone who attended, prayed, presented, sponsored, exhibited, and helped make this year’s Rebuilding the Sacred Hearts of Our Communities Faith Based Affordable Housing Summit such a meaningful gathering.

Held during the week leading up to Juneteenth, the Summit was created to connect faith leaders in directly impacted communities with practical information, resources, and relationships to explore affordable housing development. Together, faith leaders, housing professionals, advocates, developers, lenders, public officials, and community partners gathered to ask an urgent question:

How can sacred spaces help meet the need for safe, stable, affordable housing?

We are deeply grateful to every speaker, moderator, presenter, and panelist who shared wisdom, experience, and vision, including:

A special thank you to our speakers, moderators, presenters, and panelists: Rev. Danilo Archbold, New Jerusalem Cathedral, for opening us in prayer; Rev. Ron Abad, CEO of Community Housing Innovations; Rev. Jahmel K. Robinson, Senior Pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Albany; Michael Lappin, Founder of MLappin & Associates; Jerrod Delaine, The Delaine Companies; Meta Brunzema, Co-Owner and Principal of Collective for Community, Culture & Environment; Moses Gates, Vice President for Housing and Neighborhood Planning at Regional Plan Association; Ted Houghton, Principal of Terra Linda Housing Services; Ralph Fasano, Executive Director of Concern Housing; Rachel Fee, New York Housing Conference; John Mangin, Director of Housing at NYC Planning; Asia Thomas, Organizing Director of Open New York; Joshua Berman, Campaigns Manager at Regional Plan Association; Christian Romero, Assistant Director, Office of Faith and Nonprofit Development Services; Elizabeth Mackey of VOCAL-NY; and Rev. Macky Alston, Executive Minister of Middle Collegiate Church, for closing us in prayer. Your wisdom, experience, and commitment helped move this work from vision to action.

A heartfelt thank you as well to our sponsors, exhibitors, and foundational supporters:
Concern Housing, MLappin & Associates, Leviticus Fund, Goldstein Hall, Cannon Heyman & Weiss LLP, Valley Bank, Magnusson Architecture and Planning PC, New York State Homes and Community Renewal, Atharhacton Planning & Consulting, Robert DeFalco Realty, Calyx, Trinity Church Wall Street, The Collegiate Churches of New York, and Nur Ashki Jerrahi Community.

Most of all, thank you to every attendee who showed up with curiosity, courage, and commitment.

The housing crisis requires all of us. This Summit reminded us that the faith community has both a moral voice and a practical role to play in building just, thriving, and affordable communities across New York.

💜 The work continues.
🏠 Sacred spaces can help rebuild communities.
🤝 Together, we are planting seeds for housing justice.

06/21/2026

Happy Father’s Day to the fathers and father figures: dads, grandfathers, stepfathers, foster fathers, uncles, mentors, spiritual fathers, coaches, caregivers, and all who have offered guidance, protection, love, and wisdom along the way. Today, and everyday, we honor those who have helped shape our steps, encouraged us when the road was hard, and shown us what it means to walk with strength, patience, and compassion.

Proverbs 4:11-12 reminds us: “I will guide you in the way of wisdom and I will lead you in upright paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hampered, and when you run, you will not stumble.” May this day also hold space for those grieving fathers, those missing their children, navigating complicated relationships, or those families longing for healing.

May we always celebrate the love that guides us, the wisdom that grounds us, and the faithful presence that helps us keep moving forward.

06/19/2026

A Juneteenth Message

Juneteenth is one of America’s newest federal holidays, yet it marks the long-delayed reckoning with America’s oldest original sin: slavery.

On June 19, 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and brought word that enslaved people were free. But freedom was not sudden. Freedom was hard fought and long won. It came gradually, unevenly, and only through struggle.

In some places, slavery was abolished earlier. Vermont moved against slavery in 1777. New York began a gradual process of emancipation in 1799, but slavery did not fully end in the state until 1827. Even then, freedom on paper did not mean freedom in practice.

Juneteenth is a time of celebration. It is a time to remember ancestors who endured, resisted, prayed, organized, escaped, fought, and survived. But it is also a time to remember this truth: none of us are free until all of us are free.

And we are not all free.

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, except as punishment for a crime. That exception has haunted this nation ever since. Michelle Alexander’s seminal work, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, gave language to what many communities already knew: that the carceral system has continued to control, exploit, and profit from Black bodies, disproportionately imprisoning African American men and women while benefiting from their labor.

Much like the gradual spread of freedom, oppression is also slow to cede power. Systems of oppression do not disappear; they adapt.

While mass incarceration has devastated African American communities, many of the same structures of detention, surveillance, punishment, and profit have been replicated in our immigration system today. The construction and operation of immigration detention centers are heavily driven by private-sector profit incentives. Guaranteed-minimum contracts, often called “bed guarantees” or “lockup quotas,” allow companies to receive taxpayer dollars whether beds are filled or not. This creates a dangerous incentive for long-term detention, expanded capacity, and policies that value profit over people.

Companies such as The GEO Group and CoreCivic have long profited from incarceration in the United States. Today, they also play a major role in immigration detention. These companies are not new actors. They have operated for years as private prison corporations. What is new is the broader public attention they are receiving because of their expanding role in immigration enforcement.

This brings me back to the meaning of Juneteenth.

None of us are free until all of us are free.

Too often in social justice spaces, our issues are pitted against one another instead of being understood as deeply connected. Climate and Immigration justice should not be pitted against housing, racial or criminal justice. These are not competing causes. They are part of the same struggle for human dignity. We are all crying out for justice.

In an era of performative allyship and transactional leadership, the deep roots of justice work are too often left by the wayside. We see those who are well-heeled speak easily about taking time for rest, while those most impacted by injustice have no choice but to keep working, pushing, building, surviving, and organizing.

Let those who want to rest do so. The work continues.

Juneteenth is a day of celebration, but it is not a day to take our eyes off freedom. Not partial freedom. Not symbolic freedom. Not freedom anesthetized by ceremonies, slogans, and statements. We must keep our eyes on comprehensive freedom: freedom from cages, freedom from poverty, freedom from displacement, freedom from environmental harm, freedom from deportation, freedom from racial terror, and freedom from systems that profit from human suffering.

We can organize in silos. We can retreat into ivory towers and granite cathedrals. We can pit housing justice against climate justice, immigration justice against racial justice, regional justice against economic justice. But in the end, we are just hurting all of us.

Or we can organize with each other.

We can build walls, or we can build bridges.

This is not a time to rest. It is a time to build.

Juneteenth is a holiday. But no, we do not get off.

There is much work to be done.

06/14/2026

We are just 4 days away from the Housing Summit! Scholarship tickets are available! All are welcome!

06/09/2026

The faith community is an essential partner in solving the housing crisis.

Join us for the Second Annual Rebuilding the Sacred Hearts of Our Community Faith-Based Affordable Housing Summit on Wednesday, June 17th at The Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Dr, New York, NY 10027.

This full-day Summit will bring together faith leaders, developers, banks, funders, real estate professionals, and government partners to help congregations explore how their property can support affordable housing, community development, and homelessness prevention.

📍 The Riverside Church 490 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10027
🕗 Registration: 8:00 AM
🕘 Program: 9:00 AM–5:00 PM

All are welcome. Scholarship tickets are available.

Register today at www.nyscoc.org ( Click on the event banner) or https://bit.ly/FaithHousingSummit

Questions? Email [email protected] or call (518) 436-9319.

Please share this invitation with your pastor, congregation, board, trustees, property committee, and community partners.

05/29/2026

Christian Castro, who had been charged with assault in the shooting of a Venezuelan man during the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, was taken into custody Friday morning.

Address

85 Chestnut Street
Albany, NY
12210

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 3pm
Tuesday	9am - 3pm
Wednesday	9am - 3pm
Thursday	9am - 3pm

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+15083808289

Website

http://nyscoc.org/

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