Red Hook Justice - Your Community. Your Court.

     Today, July 10th our JustWorks: Summer Internship Participants teamed up with the Justice Center's Neighborhood Restitution Crew and the Community Service Supervisors to help with a project at St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church. The church's gate spans about  three blocks and is extremely rusted and has chipped paint. Our project today was the scrape away the loose paint in order to prep it for a new coat of paint in a few weeks. It is a large job but we were out and ready to work!       It was a beautiful day and ou r interns wore their Justice Center shirts proudly and cheered each other along. The  Father of the church was extremely  grateful and even people passing and driving by were cheering us on and thanking us as well. Projects like this are a good way to give back to the community through teamwork. It is the first of many projects we are working on with the church to help repair and beautify it. It was a...

  On June 16th, 2015 the Red Hook Youth Court opened its doors to family, friends, guest and staff for our Spring Recognition and Induction Ceremony where we acknowledged our members for their hard work and dedication. Honorable Judge, Alex Calabrese was the Key Note speaker of the ceremony. He is a huge supporter of the Red Hook Youth Court and truly believes in the mission of the program. We had a full house, with laughs, smiles and hugs!   10 members are moving on to other endeavors, in which 4 of those 10 are graduating seniors from High School who will be starting college this Fall. 10 Members will be staying on to serve as mentors and 10 newly inducted youth court members who were sworn in by Sergeant William Bauman, of the Unified Court System will all be sitting on the Youth Court and beginning their journey this Summer.   Additionally, Jamilah Daniels and Ann Doc, graduating members from Youth Court and High School wrote speeches...

On June 4th, a group of the Red Hook Youth Court members and staff went to see the "Theater of the Oppressed NYC" performance at the New School. Before attending this event, the youth court members had no idea that anything like this went on! While there, we learned that 12 different legislative laws were changed through something called "Legislative Theatre." The audience members get to be "spect-actors," which is great because the actual audience members got to participate in the play themselves and share their ideas. The performances last night were put on by members of the Staten Island Youth Justice Center (part of the Center for Court Innovation Family). These two plays dealt with real life issues such as getting stopped for not paying your bus fare, arriving late to school and getting sent to the principal's office because of the "zero tolerance policy," getting into fights at school, not knowing one's rights, and being raciall...

The Red Hook Community Justice Center’s JustArts: Photography Program allows high school aged students to learn more about their communities through the photos they take. Over the course of 12 weeks, these students became young photographers and learned about  the VISUAL and WRITTEN art of photography! On May 26 th we recognized all of the students hard work and dedication to the program in a culminating exhibition entitled “Picture This". The students explored their communities and highlighted different aspects of it, from transportation, to street art, culinary cultures, work life and community transition. The students were extremely proud and happy to put on a show!   Their work is currently being displayed at the local Brooklyn Public Library (Red Hook Branch, 7 Wolcott Street) indefinitely for community members enjoyment. If you are in the neighborhood and would like to see the young photographers work stop by!   This program was present...

Close to 200 young adults came out to our 6th Annual Youth Summer Internship and Job Fair in Red Hook this week!      The Red Hook Community Justice Center began organizing the Summer Internship and Job Fair for the last 6 years in response to high unemployment levels among local teens and their strong desire to find work during the summer. Young People gain valuable skills that help them academically, professionally and most importantly, we want young people to have meaningful activities during their summer break.     This year we had 18 organizations come out to recruit! A Special Thank-You to:   Year Up ,   Green City Force ,   Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow , Catholic Charities: Young Adult Internship Program, 5 th Avenue Communities Stronger Together and Adult Education Programs, Red Hook Initiative, Dance Theater Etcetera, Added Value,   State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz ,   Projec...