New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE)

NICE began as a community-led campaign to reject divisive, anti-immigrant rhetoric being propagated in New York and across the country. In 1999, the group Project USA launched a misleading billboard campaign throughout New York City. Under the leadership of Bryan Pu-Folkes, the son of immigrants and then a public-interest lawyer, a coalition of immigrants in Western Queens responded by organizing a subway poster campaign presenting facts about the contributions of immigrant communities to counter Project USA's xenophobic and divisive messages.Coalition members from the South and Central American, East Asian, South Asian, Caribbean, and Eastern European communities, united by a desire to give immigrants greater visibility and voice around the pressing needs of their communities, agreed to form NICE to sustain its collaborative work around a proactive agenda. Over the past four years, NICE has mobilized a broad base of immigrant communities to implement organizing and outreach campaigns through its three primary initiatives: the Government Access Project, the Another City is Possible political education project, and the New Immigrant Youth Initiative.