Segregation is Killing Us

At Territorial Empathy we’re dedicated to promoting racial justice through educational equity. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City, we realized that school closures would leave 800,000 children facing food insecurity and that many families lacked the resources for remote learning. We also noticed that social distancing would be a privilege in a city with so much income inequality and that working-class communities of color would face the burden of the pandemic. Through a partnership with the student organization, IntegrateNYC, we created "Segregation is Killing Me," an interactive Story Map platform that analyses the forces behind these findings, and proposes an innovative admissions policy designed to inform the opening of New York City's public schools. Our goal was to help the public understand the systemic factors that have led to health, income, educational, racial, and environmental disparities in New York City and ultimately promote a more equitable future for the city’s most vulnerable families.