Collections : [New York State Modern Political Archive]

This series includes information on the Committee for Progressive Legislation's first administrative year, including the proposal for organization within the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany. The series contains organizational bulletins beginning in 1969. The bulletins contain information for members and other interested parties in relation to lobbying events and meetings. Their newsletter bulletins inform their followers of what issues they were currently working on as well as what their direction for the following month would be. This series also contains several membership lists, photographs of group members at events, as well as financial records. Unfortunately the financial documents are very scarce, however they do reveal administrative personnel problems. Also in this series is a sparse but informative file of the group's meeting minutes. The minutes reveal the anticipated future of the organization over the years. Much of the correspondence between Committee for Progressive Legislature members consists of offering solutions to the various organizational disagreements and problems. The decisions reached by Chairperson Kay Dingle are documented, along with other membership information, in the organization's newsletters.

The Committee for Progressive Legislation records document the efforts of the group in bringing attention to issues important to many New Yorkers, especially abortion, family planning, welfare rights, and the attack on separation of church and state.

The series contains administrative materials created at the chapter, regional, state and national levels of the National Organization for Women. This includes meeting minutes, by-laws, financial reports, conference materials, legislative and lobbying files, task force materials and correspondence. The national, regional and statewide materials were acquired and retained at the local level, many by Sue Stevens Larsen, an Albany Area Chapter president in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Albany Area NOW Chapter files consist of event flyers, press releases, correspondence, meeting minutes and newspaper clippings which document day-to-day activities. Please note that the New York State Council Meeting files may include just meeting materials for some years, while folders for other years contain plans, possibly discussed at meetings, event materials, and correspondence. At this is how the organization arranged the files, archivists retained this original order.

The National Organization for Women--Albany, N.Y. Chapter Records document the daily activities and special events involving the chapter as well as the chapter's interactions with the state and federal organizations.

The Administrative Files series consists of organizational records, which document the activities of the Board of Directors. These include documents, by-laws and changes, annual reports to the executive committee. Annual financial reports, meeting minutes and materials relating to the annual retreat of the Executive Committee are found in this series. Many files pertaining to key members of Tenants & Neighbors such as Michael McKee, William Rowen, and James Garst are represented in the administrative files series.

Tenants and Neighbors is a statewide coalition of New York's tenants and tenant associations that fight for tenants' rights and affordable housing for all people. The origins of Tenants and Neighbors dates to a meeting of tenant and housing activists from across the state in August 1972 at St. Rose College in Albany, N.Y. By December 1974, a formal organization was developed by housing and tenant activists across the state that drew up by-laws and created the original name as the New York Tenants Coalition. The first statewide membership meeting was held in February 1975. In 1995, the organization changed its name to New York State Tenants and Neighbors. The collection includes: minutes, annual reports, newsletter and other publications, legislative and organizational memoranda, press releases, clippings, video and press coverage.

This series includes administrative files for both statewide PEF operations and Division 169. Where necessary, files related to statewide PEF are marked as "New York State PEF" to prevent confusion. Division 169-specific files are marked as "Division 169". There are numerous subject files. The collection's creator did not distinguish between subject and administrative files. This series includes files related to contracts and contract negotiations, PEF's relationships with its affiliates, PEF history, constitutions and by-laws, elections, retirement plans, health insurance and other benefits, PEF policy, steward training, and many other aspects of PEF and Division 169 operations. There are a number of designated correspondence files; however, correspondence is also found throughout this series and others in subject files.

The Public Employees Federation (PEF) was founded in 1979 to represent members of the Professional, Scientific, and Technical (PS&T) bargaining unit of New York State. PS&T employees had formerly been represented by CSEA, the state's largest public employee union. PEF founders believed that the concerns of the PS&T unit were not adequately represented by CSEA, the majority of whose members were non-professional state employees. PEF's stated mission is to "provide the leadership necessary for PEF members to achieve employment security, higher wages, better working conditions, and improved retirement benefits." Materials in this collection document PEF activities at both the state and division level. There is extensive coverage of executive board activities from 1978 through mid-2000, annual conventions, committee meetings, and contract negotiations. Also included are files for PEF Division 169, PEF's Environmental Conservation Division. These include correspondence, agendas and minutes for labor/management meetings, material on committees, and administrative files. This collection also documents the activities of reform groups and political parties within PEF (most notably, the Statewide Coalition for a Democratic Union) and PEF's relationships with its national affiliates, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Teachers. Particularly strong is the collection of bulletin board postings, which includes almost everything posted on Division 169 PEF bulletin boards from 1979 through 2000. There are also official PEF publications, including a near-complete run of PEF's official monthly newsletter to members, The Communicator.

This series contains documents relating to the operation of the Schoharie Land Trust, including correspondence, membership records, by-laws, policies, publications, committee reports, and meeting minutes. The meeting minutes begin in 1990 with the Steering Committee which became the Board of Directors with full incorporation in 1991. The records primarily begin in 1990 with the beginning of planning for the SLT, with a few articles and publications included from the 1980's.

Founded in 1990 to to promote the preservation of agricultural, scenic, forest, natural, recreational, and open space land in Schoharie County.

This series contains records from the New York Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides and local organizations that are members of NYCAP, or that relate to the staff (particularly Tracy Frisch) directly. It includes the following: committee meeting minutes, agendas, and reports; fundraising activities; annual telemarketing campaign call sheets; by-laws; correspondence; New York State Department of Labor grants; donation receipts; health insurance information; information request letters; technical assistance logs; and prepaid sales and invoice receipts from 1997-2002, [which provide almost the only information on the organization from that time period in terms of membership, information requests, donations, conferences, and sales].

Records of non-profit citizens' organization committed to reducing hazardous chemical pesticides use through education and advocacy.

This series contains records generated by the Social Justice Center in the process of its ongoing mission to provide space and services to social justice organizations. The records include financial reports, correspondence, and meeting minutes from the Coordinating Committee and later the centers board. Also included are documents related to fundraising, including dance and walk-a-thons, grant proposals, and related materials. The records of the Centro de Progresso, the only member group of the SJC with material in this collection, can be found in this series. Finally, there is a small amount of material in Electronic File format from the planning of a workshop of the Dismantling Racism project.

The Center was formed in 1981 by an alliance of non-profit activist organizations in order to provide a central location, office space, and basic services for activist groups in Albany, New York.

This series contains photocopies of meeting agendas and minutes and routine administrative records of the Solidarity Commitee of the Capital District. The minutes document the circumstances leading to the formation of the SCCD, its mission, and many of its subsequent activities. Some sets of minutes are highly detailed, but others consist of brief handwritten notes made on the margins of meeting agendas. Minutes of the SCCD's predecessor organization, the Greyhound Strikers Solidarity Committee of the Capital District, are housed in the Greyhound Lines Strike folder in the Subject Files series.

The Greyhound Strikers Solidarity Committee of the Capital District was created by Albany-area labor union activists in support of the autumn 1983 Amalgamated Transit Union strike against Greyhound Bus Lines. After the strike, the group was reconstituted as the Solidarity Committee of the Capital District (SCCD) and worked to support hundreds of strikes and labor activities in Eastern New York, across the country, and in Latin America.

This collection contains the records Citizen Action of New York. Citizen Action of New York is a grassroots membership organization that fights for social, racial, economic, and enviornmental justice. Working closely with New York State politicans, community organizers, and activists, Citizen Action members hope to end the oppression of marginalized groups.

This series contains minutes and correspondence of the Albany Central Federation of Labor as well as annual reports, constitutions, and by-laws from the Albany, New York State, and national AFL-CIO. Memorandum and financial statements are also included.

The collection documents the activities of the Albany Central Federation of Labor (AFL CIO) from 1983 to 2000.