We Are All Brooklyn

Press Conference and Forums in Response to a 2004 Hate Crime – In February 2004, an act of hate sent shock waves through New York City's ethnic and immigrant communities. In reaction to this incident, which resulted in the tragic death of Valery Charnavus and the beatings of Vadim Ranov, Boris Vasiliev, Segey Hurtin and Sergey Gorlov – all recent New York City immigrants from the former Soviet Union – We Are All Brooklyn organized a press conference at Borough Hall in cooperation with Borough President Marty Markowitz. We Are All Brooklyn also, as a proactive response, organized numerous workshops and trainings and a borough-wide conference on how community leaders can successfully navigate the criminal justice system and prevent hate crimes within their communities. We decried this act of hate as an assault on all who live in our city. At our forum, participants received expertise from the New York City Police Department, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and several advocacy organizations. From this conference, we developed workshops in foreign languages (Russian, Hindi, Urdu and Bengali) for community leaders in order to train them how to better navigate the hate crimes system. We also developed a series of palm cards.