Get to Know Us — NUBE East Boston

What are NUBEs’ beliefs?

Mission

Neighbors United for a Better East Boston (NUBE) is an organization that develops abundant leaders who support social transformation and shifting political power. Our leaders organize and advocate for inclusive democratic processes and just public policies to create a vibrant economy and environment for all East Boston.

An Abundant Leader has an open-mind and heart, practicing our values in action, and believing that our strength comes from the community and that the “gifts” we share are the solutions to the problems we face.

Values

Our work is guided by the deep commitment to developing a more just, understanding, and sustainable neighborhood. We manifest this through learning, teaching, and practicing the following core values:

Welcome: We welcome our neighbors to create social change that is grounded in love, a force to take action against social injustices. We encourage our neighbors to act as an inspiration to build an abundant community.
Justice: We lead with our hearts to ensure that the public institutions serving East Boston honors all our neighbors, especially those most marginalized. We encourage and support our leaders to be in service of advancing social justice movements.
Abundance: We model a unified community where we share our gifts and embrace our struggles so that these are never endured alone. Our culturally diverse space promote a healthy community for present and future generations.

Vision

We envision a community where neighbors co-exist, support, and encourage each other to create a more just, sustainable, and abundant community that allows our families to prosper and attain the highest possible quality of life.

Belief

NUBE believes that abundant leaders, who live our values and intentionally engage in social, economic, and political life, will help create alternative systems and structures that promote social transformation. Through trainings, actions, and building an abundant community, NUBE has faith that we are the change we want to see in the world.

It all started in a neighbor’s living room on Everett St.

Since its conception, NUBE has been working with a diverse cadre of leaders to build a direct action grassroots organization. In 2007, NUBE’s members engaged for the first time in local politics through a grassroots campaign to elect the district’s first Latina who ran for office. One of the most critical aspects of the campaign’s accomplishment was the creation of a diverse core group of residents who had built trust with each other, gained concrete skills in electoral organizing, and developed a common understanding of the challenges and possibilities facing their community.

Since our conception, NUBE has had a deep commitment to developing a one to one intentional relationship that can deepen our daily neighbor to neighbor interaction. This is important to build on our shared values and create a welcoming, abundant and just community. We never imagined that 30 local neighbors' vision in 2008 could co-create, community oriented programming, events, and the training that today we have engaged over 400 neighbors and educated over 1,000 voters in the civic engagement process.

Our vehicle to build community and civic engagement is to expand our organizing, education, and leadership development programming to as many neighbors as possible. We want abundant leaders across our island practicing and sharing our values in their daily interactions. For the past decade, we have been faced with many successes, challenges, and inspirations that have allowed us to deepen our commitment to social justice movements, our community, and to each other. We are proud of our many accomplishments but to highlight a few here is what we would like to share with you.

NUBE successfully deepened 10 new members in voter and civic engagement skills throughout the year, every year; reaching over 100 participants through our civic engagement movie series.
Collected over 200 pledges in support of the Just Cause Eviction municipal ordinance; and encouraged members to engage in active local, state, and national campaigns.
Reflected internally as an organization facing critical questions and decisions on the organization structure, role, and function for long-term sustainability and our approach in combating oppressive racist public institutions and hateful rhetoric in the 2016 political climate.
Increased civic engagement and voter turnout by 10-15% in the 2014 election in precincts with a high density of people of color and 66% of contacted voters turning out on Election Day.
Collected over 1,300 signatures for the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition ballot referendum to place raising the MA minimum wage and Earned Paid Sick Time on the 2014 gubernatorial ballot. Passed Earned Sick Time by 80% in NUBE core precincts in comparison 65% in non-covered precincts.

Visit our NUBE annual calendar and events and learn about our Abundant Leadership Fellowship programming and volunteer opportunities.

Our team

NUBE has faith that we are the change we want to see in the world and our work for the next decade is to create an organizational structure that models that world. What we have named an abundant community is moving from a mindset of scarcity but toward there is enough for all of and future generations. This is not an easy shift nor do we have many models to practice. That is why NUBE is lucky to have neighbors that are willing to be pioneers and walk this path together. Meet our leadership:

The core of our organization is rooted in NUBE Centro, which is a team that carries out one or two particular roles to ensure that our goals, vision and mission are at the forefront of our work: