FUREE... Past, Present and Future

For 20-year-old Eric Valentin, it all started with an envelope addressed to his mother from her landlord.

Valentin's mother, the letter read, had only a few days to vacate an apartment she and her family had lived for years on Dwight Street in Red Hook.

"They told her that they had to make renovations and that she would have to find another place to stay," he said. "But she had nowhere to go."

That's when Valentin first came into contact with Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, a worker and minority rights group that held its 9th Annual Community Conference at St. Joseph's High School in Downtown Brooklyn on Saturday.

Joining Brooklyn residents young and old, Valentin celebrated FUREE's past achievements, discussed current citywide legislation and prepared for future battles against developers at a wide-ranging event meant to energize the group's grassroots base of support.

"Our power is not in the finances... our power is in coming together, working together, staying unified, going out, getting in the trenches, instead of being in the background and complaining," said Brenda Stewart, a founding member of FUREE speaking at Saturday's conference.

Stewart, who began during the Giuliani Administration the precursor to FUREE, WEP [Welfare Education Program] Workers Together, outlined some of the past successes of the organization. That list included securing $1.5 million for family daycare, preventing the closure of low-cost childcare facilities and registering 10,000 low-income voters.

In the coming weeks, FUREE will make its presence known at a rally Nov. 21 in Harlem in favor of a bill requiring businesses receiving public money to pay workers a "living wage." That bill will be the subject of a City Council hearing the following day.

But perhaps more than anything else, the sense of even bigger hurdles to come loomed over the conference.

Chief among those challenges was the continuing fast pace of development that has transformed Downtown Brooklyn from a neighborhood dotted with small businesses and public housing to a haven for big-box stores and luxury condo developments.

And one of those future projects, the City Point high-rise condo tower planned to rise at the site of at Flatbush Avenue Ext. and Willoughby Street, promised to be the biggest yet.

"We need to ensure that 50 percent of those units are set aside for affordable housing," said Councilwoman Letitia James, D-Brooklyn, at the event.

As a member of FUREE's youth council, Valentin seemed ready for the fight.

"With FUREE, I found out that I don't need to follow the rules and not question things and just go along," Valentin said as he recounted the ultimately successful effort to keep his mother in her Red Hook home. "We can change things."