University at Buffalo Center for Urban Studies

06/08/2026

Collective Work and Responsibility is the theme that drives the annual Fruit Belt Clean-A-Thon. This principle reflects the practice of democratic community building, and means that people, organizations, and institutions have a shared obligation to work together to address challenges, solve problems, and build better, more democratic neighborhoods and cities. The key ideas are shared responsibility, collective action, mutual care, and community power.

Each year, Futures Academy and the UB Center for Urban Studies issue a call for organizations and institutions to join us in this movement to keep our community free of garbage and debris—and to become part of this school and community tradition of maintaining and caring for the neighborhood we share.

We thank the following organizations for answering this clarion call.

Fruit Belt Coalition — major Fruit Belt community partner
UB Liberty Partnerships — major sponsor & organizational partner
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center — core partner in our success
Grassroots Gardens WNY — supporting our garden and helping our green spaces flourish
Cheesy Chick Food Truck & Catering — fed our incredible volunteers and kept the energy high!
City of Buffalo - Cleanup supplies, trash pickup, and tabling
UB Community Health Equity Research Institute - major sponsor

We would also like to thank the UB Jacobs School of Medicine, School or Architecture and Urban Planning, and the School of Social Work, as well as Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, and the UB Office of Community Engagement and Inclusion for support with tabling and sending volunteers!

06/08/2026

This school and community tradition continues. On Friday, June 5, Futures Academy, on Carlton Street in the Fruit Belt, in partnership with the UB Center for Urban Studies, held its annual neighborhood Clean-A-Thon. For the past 26 years, this school tradition has brought students, residents, and partners together to celebrate and clean up the Fruit Belt, with the only interruption occurring during the COVID pandemic.

The school shuts down for a day to focus on cleanup activities and the festival that follows, celebrating our collective work and honoring the community. Futures Academy is the only Western New York school with such a neighborhood cleanup program.

The event began in 2000, when our team at the UB Center for Urban Studies began working with middle schoolers at Futures Academy, a K-8 school. Back then, the school was fronted by a block of unkept vacant lots and an abandoned corner store, and a neighborhood landscape filled with trash and debris.

We developed a participatory democracy educational pedagogy to inspire students to become citizen-activists who believe the purpose of education is to provide them with the knowledge and insight required to earn a living AND to create a world worth living in.

We worked with the school and neighborhood residents to gain control of the block between Orange and Peach and to transform the unkept vacant lots into Frida’s Rebel Garden — a park and community garden.

Next, we attacked the problem of neighborhood trash and debris by launching the first annual Clean-A-Thon in 2000, under the banner of Collective Work and Responsibility.

Twenty-six years later, we are still fighting to keep the neighborhood trash- and debris-free, and our flag flies over the land we seized, reimagined, and transformed into Frida’s Rebel Garden---a symbol of resistance, hope, and endless possibilities.

https://www.wivb.com/news/local-news/buffalo/buffalo-students-lend-a-hand-in-fruit-belt-clean-a-thon/

06/08/2026

06/03/2026

Our 26th Annual Fruit Belt Neighborhood Clean-A-Thon is this Friday, June 5th!

Come spend the morning with us to clean up the neighborhood, meet your neighbors, and spend some time in the garden. Cheesy Chick Food Truck is serving up free food for all volunteers and there will be community tables, music, and fun.

Friday, June 5 | 9 AM – 2 PM
295 Carlton Street, Buffalo, NY 14204

Hope to see you there! Volunteer sign up for our Clean-Up Crew is still open if you’d like to help out.

Sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSez6-gXuzlIWuQhZSHzWRj8dG9P-TxR6LeXIDeERKs2QkHl1g/viewform

05/27/2026

Don't Sleep. The world is moving fast — and it's moving against us.
From Memphis to Sudan, here is what is happening right now that every Black person needs to know.
Tennessee just dismantled its only Black-majority district. After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, Governor Bill Lee carved up Memphis' 9th District to dilute Black political power before midterms. The NAACP has already filed suit to block it.
Black kids are losing their schools. U.S. public school enrollment has hit a 20-year low — and majority-Black urban districts are facing closures, layoffs, and the elimination of special education services by 2027.
14 million people displaced in Sudan. Mass killings. Famine. Refugee camps overflowing into Chad, South Sudan and Egypt. Women and girls facing violence just trying to flee to safety.
This is not just news. This is our reality in 2026.
Read all 13 things you must know — link below.
https://www.theroot.com/dont-sleep-13-things-black-folks-must-know-about-what-2000104224/slides/4
By Angela Wilson | The Root | May 8, 2026

05/21/2026

This 1-Minute Section Of Mike Johnson's Public Prayer Is Disturbing Experts
At the Trump-backed "Rededicate 250" prayer gathering on the National Mall, House Speaker Mike Johnson called teaching America's true history a "sinister ideology."
But as UB Professor Henry-Louis Taylor Jr. puts it — the United States could not exist without the massive wealth produced by slave labor and without the violent seizure of Indigenous lands. Calling that truth an "attack on our heroes" isn't patriotism. It's whitewashing.
As civil rights leader Nadine Smith said: "Call honest history dangerous, call truth divisive, call censorship patriotism — and hope nobody notices the hypocrisy."
Read the full story by Kimberley Richards | HuffPost | May 19, 2026 👇
🔗 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-johnson-rededicate-250-christian-prayer-experts_l_6a0c977ae4b079e4ea33a9ff

Experts break down what concerns them the most about the House speaker's message to thousands of attendees at the "Rededicate 250" event.

05/06/2026

FASCISM AND THE RACIST ATTACK ON VOTING RIGHTS

The gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court and the vicious attacks on immigrants of color appear to be separate actions - but they are not. They are both acts of voter suppression and direct attacks on liberal democracy.

These attacks on Blacks and immigrants of color are not about election law or immigration policy.

They are part of a coordinated right-wing project to restructure the United States into a form of democratic fascist authoritarianism that uses elections and constitutional governance to create a racialized fascist authoritarian state.

However, the creation of such a state cannot happen without suppressing the vote of Blacks and immigrants of color.
The reason is simple: the alliance of Blacks, immigrants of color, and progressive Whites is the only political force capable of stopping the Right from turning the United States into a fascist authoritarian state rooted in White supremacy.

The elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 sent shock waves throughout the American Right.

In both elections, most Whites voted against Obama---and he STILL won the presidency. John McCain received 57% of the white vote in 2008, while Mitt Romney received 61% in 2012. Yet both men lost to Obama —McCain by roughly 7 percentage points and Romney by nearly 4 points nationally.

The victories forced the Right to confront the stark reality: Blacks, immigrants of color, and progressive Whites could win state and national elections without the support of the White majority.
Obama's victories galvanized the Right.

In 2009, the Tea Party emerged as an oppositional force to the Obama presidency and to sound the alarm over the rising electoral power of Blacks and immigrants of color. The Great Replacement theory followed, intensifying anti-immigration and racism.

The re-election of Obama in 2012 intensified the White nationalism movement, racialized fascist authoritarianism, and transformed Donald Trump into a powerful force inside the Republican Party.
Building the alliance between Blacks, immigrants of color, and progressive Whites is critical to stopping the racialized fascist authoritarian movement.

Cast away your illusions and fight back.

The gutting of the Voting Rights Act represented a major setback for the progressive movement, but the fight to create a nation grounded in racial, social, and economic justice continues.

Life is Good. —Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr. | UB Center for Urban Studies | UB Community Equity Research Institute | UB School of Architecture and Planning | May 6th, 2026

04/27/2026

The UB Center for Urban Studies, in partnership with BPS #37 MJD Futures Preparatory School and Liberty Partnerships, is excited to bring back a beloved Fruit Belt neighborhood community event!

It's that time of year again — the 26th Annual Fruit of the City Clean-A-Thon is coming up and we want YOU there! 🌿

Every year our neighborhood comes together to show up for the community we love — and this year is no different. Come spend the morning with us, cleanup the neighborhood and meet your neighbors, and help make Buffalo a little more beautiful for everyone who calls it home.

📅 Friday, June 5, 2026
⏰ 9 AM – 2 PM
📍 BPS #37 @ 295 Carlton Street, Buffalo, NY 14204

Join us as a volunteer to help clean up the Fruit Belt and stay after to enjoy food, music, and games in Frida's Rebel Garden!

Want to volunteer? Sign up at the link here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSez6-gXuzlIWuQhZSHzWRj8dG9P-TxR6LeXIDeERKs2QkHl1g/viewform or reach out to Sarah Cunningham at [email protected] or (716) 829-5910 with any questions.

04/24/2026

Reimagine Buffalo's East Side for the People Living There

Build communities for the low- to moderate-income people already living in those neighborhoods.

A recent call to build hundreds of new "affordable" housing units on Buffalo's more than 7,000 publicly owned vacant lots is not a solution—it is a call to intensify the racialized, profit-making gentrification of Buffalo's East Side.

Under the current market-driven system of neighborhood development, new housing — especially owner-occupied housing — is always built for the upwardly mobile and middle class. Developers do not build for low- to moderate-income groups.

They build for those who can pay market rates, with a small number of below-market units included only to unlock subsidies and tax credits. That is how the racialized, profit-making system of neighborhood development works.

On Buffalo's East Side, this means one thing: publicly owned land—one of the last remaining collective assets in Black neighborhoods—will be transferred from public ownership into private ownership and incorporated into the profit-centered housing market to generate profits and wealth at the expense of Black Buffalo.

In Buffalo and across the nation, this type of neighborhood development has led to a decline in the Black share of major-city populations. Everywhere, Blacks are being displaced from central cities, with the most significant losses in:

Washington, DC · Atlanta · Los Angeles · Chicago · New Orleans · New York City

This type of neighborhood development places profits over people. It resets land values, raises property taxes, and reorganizes the neighborhood life and culture around a new class of residents—mostly White and mostly middle class.

This is the predictable outcome when neighborhood development is driven by efforts to increase population, bolster the tax base, and make communities desirable for the upwardly mobile White population.

The alternative is to reimagine and rebuild neighborhoods for the actually existing population in those communities, turning places of arrested development into healthy, prosperous, and joyful communities. That is the goal of the Upper Broadway-Fillmore Neighborhood Transformation Project.

Resist racialized, profit-making gentrification on Buffalo's East Side. Life is Good. ✊

— Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr. | UB Center for Urban Studies | UB Community Equity Research Institute | UB School of Architecture and Planning | 23 April 2026

04/22/2026

Our partners at Partnership for the Public Good are hosting a FREE Advocacy Summit and we'd love for you to join — because building stronger communities is what we're all about!

📅 Saturday, April 25, 2026
⏰ 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
📍 Hayes Hall, UB South Campus – 250 Hayes Rd, Buffalo, NY 14214

This day-long summit teaches residents the skills they need to advocate for the changes they want to see. Topics include Public Policy 101, working with the media, power mapping, meeting elected officials, community coalition building, trauma-informed advocacy, and more!

Open to everyone — both introductory and advanced workshops available. All skill levels welcome!

🔗 Register for free here: https://bit.ly/2026AdvocacySummit