About CARL
Rooted in community.
Committed to liberation.
Capital Area Relief & Liberation is a Black-led, abolitionist organization connecting practical care with collective power in New York.
Our purpose
Black liberation.
Shared responsibility.
Food, housing, safety, recovery, and dignity are foundations for freedom. Our work brings mutual aid and organizing together: meeting immediate needs while confronting the systems that create them.
We build from lived experience, relationships, and the knowledge held in our own communities. The people closest to a problem belong at the center of shaping the response.
What guides us
Dignity.
Support should recognize the whole person. We approach people as neighbors with knowledge, agency, and something to contribute.
Solidarity.
Mutual aid means showing up for one another and sharing responsibility for the conditions of our collective life.
Liberation.
We connect community care, political education, and abolitionist organizing to the long work of building freedom.
People & place
Built through relationships.
CARL was co-founded by Thomas Kearney, Mercedes Brantley, and Taequann Hall.
Our work is rooted in New York’s Capital Region and surrounding communities, with program connections across Albany, Rensselaer, Columbia, Greene, and Ulster counties.
Explore our programs or reach out about current availability, volunteering, and partnership.