New York Times: An Advocate for Domestic Workers Wins the Just Brooklyn Prize

Published in: The New York Times’ “New York Today” Newsletter

Christine Yvette Lewis is a coordinator for Domestic Workers United, a coalition that campaigns for labor rights for household employees.

Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll meet the winners of the Just Brooklyn Prize, who will receive no-strings-attached checks for $20,000. We’ll also find out how a man who’s in prison in New York could sway a House race in Alaska.

Christine Yvette Lewis says there were times in the last 10 years when she paid the rent for the space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that Domestic Workers United uses for its monthly meetings.

The group is a coalition that organizes grass-roots campaigns for labor rights for housekeepers, nannies and companions for older people. As its culture outreach coordinator, Lewis has a title but draws no salary. “We got grants along the way,” she said, but before they came through, she sometimes paid for the space “out of my own pocket.”

“I did that unseen,” she said.

But her work did not go unnoticed, and now she has been named one of five winners of the Just Brooklyn Prize for 2024.

She and each of the other four recipients will receive no-strings-attached checks for $20,000 from the Social Justice Fund, a nonprofit started by Clara Wu Tsai, who owns the New York Liberty with her husband, Joe Tsai. They also own the Brooklyn Nets. The awards are administered by the Social Justice Fund and Brooklyn Org, which changed its name from Brooklyn Community Foundation last year and channels grants to other nonprofits to deal with immediate crises and longer-range projects.

Domestic Workers United pushed for a domestic workers’ bill of rights, which became law in New York State in 2010. It codified guarantees that most workers take for granted, like paid holidays, sick days, vacation days and the right to overtime pay.

Lewis, who was trained as an early childhood teacher in Trinidad, worked as a nanny after moving to New York in 1989. She pays the bills from her work as an actress and musician; she has appeared in productions staged by the Public Theater. She called her involvement with Domestic Workers United “a labor of love.”

“Because of the nature of our jobs, we are most times in the shadows,” she said, adding that she frequently meets the workers near where they work, often in parks or libraries or sometimes on the streets as they push their employers’ strollers.

“All of the work we do is centered around educating employees,” she said. “When we educate employees, we are able to educate the employers as well. We’re not a union. It’s advocating to have women stand up and speak for their rights. It’s having the courage to stand up and negotiate for wages.”

Another Just Brooklyn Prize winner, Ninaj Raoul, is the director of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees. She said the timing of the prize was “even bigger than the money.”

“Anti-Haitianism is out there,” particularly with former President Donald Trump’s campaign, she said.

“Having this prize raises our voices,” she said. “That’s larger than the money.”

She recalled the 1990s, when waves of Haitians fled in makeshift boats. The Coast Guard detained thousands at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

“What I saw there was horrible — people were detained in tents,” she said. “I never would have imagined to fast-forward 32 years and people would be living in tents like we’re seeing on Floyd Bennett Field and Randall’s Island. It’s been overwhelming, not just for organizations like ours but for the city as a whole.”

The other winners of the Just Brooklyn Prize for 2024 are:

• Carolyn Butts, the founder and director of African Voices Communications Inc. and Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series
• Chino Hardin, a co-executive director of the Center for NuLeadership on Human Justice and Healing

• Derrick Hamilton, a co-founder of Family and Friends of the Wrongfully Convicted

The eight judges included Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, and Maya Wiley, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who ran for mayor in the Democratic primary in 2021.

Clara Wu Tsai said the Just Brooklyn Prize was started to recognize “the work of the borough’s unsung heroes” — work that she said was “pivotal to building a more equitable and just Brooklyn.” She said some of the winners would use the grant money “to expand their impact in Brooklyn.”

“But I hope that they also use some of it to treat themselves,” she said. “They most certainly deserve it.”