Mission

GANE was founded in the fall of 2006 by a group of labor unions and community organizations that had watched an economic development boom in northern New Jersey do painfully little to broaden the middle class in the state.  Development was driven mostly by developers’ drive for profits and local governments’ need for revenue, and individual unions and community groups, acting alone, largely failed to impact the direction of that development.

The diverse group of unions and community-based organizations that founded GANE saw the need for a strong, united force to promote a people-driven model of economic development.  GANE’s founding members are: ACORN, the Laborers, the New Jersey Environmental Federation, New Labor (an immigrant organizing group that runs worker centers), Reverend Maristela Freiberg of Grace Community Lutheran Church (a hub of immigrant organizing in Newark), SEIU, the Teamsters, UFCW, and UNITE HERE.

GANE is working to build a broad and diverse coalition for economic justice, developing long-term partnerships with progressive labor and community leaders who have a shared vision of economic justice.  We actively use our campaign work to enlist new allies, reaching beyond the chronic attenders of progressive round-tables.  For example, we built a campaign committee for our green jobs campaign (described below) made up of unemployed and underemployed Newark workers and of community and faith leaders who care about the issue of creating quality blue-collar jobs for Newark residents.  This campaign committee elects a representative who sits on GANE’s board.  Through this work, we engaged the active participation of two of Newark’s large community development organizations and one of its most influential Baptist churches.  All three organizations initially referred clients or congregants and then their leadership became engaged as well.   

GANE is also actively working to deepen community engagement work in the region.  To be voting members of our green jobs campaign committee, leaders had to meet turnout goals—reaching out to people within their constituencies who were directly affected or who felt strongly about the issue.  We also did direct organizing of unemployed and underemployed workers to build the campaign committee, since we feel strongly that, in the words of Frederick Douglass, “those who would be free must strike the blow” and that decision-making about campaign priorities and direction must be held by the people who will be directly affected.

GANE’s mission--making sure working people’s voices are part of the debate about our economic future--is even more critical in the economic hard times.  A development-at-all-costs ethic is harder to refute in a recession, but without concerted policy to promote a shared recovery, working people, who are hit first and worst by a recession, will suffer immensely and will emerge further behind, with their children’s futures further constrained.