Victories: making An Impact

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Since its founding, ECCO has successfully worked to drive policy both at the local level and statewide. Our achievements in recent years include:

Economic Justice

Won over $25 million in ARPA funds directed to affordable housing in Lynn, Salem, and Gloucester, and won affordable housing zoning ordinances in Lynn and Rockport.

Through signature gathering, grassroots pressure, and voter turnout work, ECCO played a key role in passing

  • The Fair Share Amendment, which will raise $1.2 billion/year in revenue for education and transportation funding by taxing individuals that earn over $1 million/year.  

  • The increase of the minimum wage to $15/hour

  • Paid sick days and paid family leave for all Massachusetts workers.

Established Shine Together, the first immigrant and Black worker-owned cleaning cooperative on the North Shore

Racial Justice

Played a key role in winning passage of historic statewide criminal justice reform legislation in 2018 and historic statewide police reform in 2021, through organizing dozens of legislative meetings, along with community forums and major public actions on the North Shore and in Boston.

Won approval from the City of Lynn for $500,000 in the Police Department budget to invest in an Unarmed Crisis Response Team, then, with our partners in the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition, got the mayor to establish an unarmed crisis response team that is separate from the police, though there is still a long way to go until that work is done!

Gained agreement from the Lynn Police Department for officers to wear body cameras on duty; and successfully advocating for funding for a new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer in the Lynn Mayor’s Office.  

Immigration

Using creative public action and education to shift the narrative on immigration, ECCO played a key role in passing a law in 2022 that gives MA residents the opportunity to obtain driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status. When the law was threatened with repeal through an anti-immigrant ballot initiative, ECCO led a successful voter outreach effort that protected the law.

Won an agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Massachusetts for quarterly meetings with ECCO leaders, and securing the release of multiple immigrants in ICE detention.

Passed Sanctuary City ordinances in Salem and Ipswich and a Sanctuary School Resolution in Beverly, to protect the rights of our undocumented neighbors.

COVID-19

Since 2021, the ECCO community raised and donated funds to support 218 families in desperate need due to the COVID crisis. We also supported one another through mutual aid and created a “RAFT rental assistance application team” to support Spanish-only ECCO members with rental assistance applications that were only available in English.

Leadership Development

Trained hundreds of community members from Black, Brown, and White communities to be more engaged and effective leaders and allies in the fight for racial, social, and economic justice