Essential Workers

Highlighting Essential Workers

In May, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, CPC began highlighting AAPI essential workers in New York City. With the sharp rise of anti-Asian acts in New York City due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we want to use this campaign to honor New Yorkers who keep our City running and fight the spread of COVID-19.

Black, Latinx, and Asian people make up more than 70% of the city’s essential workers, including transit, childcare, health care, cleaning service, and postal employees. Additionally, more than 60% of all frontline workers in New York City are women, including 81% in the social services and 74% in healthcare. More than 50 percent of frontline workers are foreign born. The building cleaning services employ the highest share of immigrants (70%), followed by healthcare (53%) and food and drug stores (53%).

Our campaign features authentic photos of New Yorkers who provide healthcare, teach our youth, deliver meals to our seniors, drive subway trains, keep our justice systems running, and so much more every day.

All of CPC's staff are essential workers. We risk our own health and our families’ health to serve others through COVID-19. When New York begins to recover, we will be the ones helping the hardest hit New Yorkers put their lives back together. 

Support our COVID-19 Relief Fund here.

Thanks to our supporters, CPC has offered COVID-19 relief and assistance to over 15,000 community members across the city since March 22nd when non-essential work in New York State went on PAUSE.
(updated June 30, 2020)