For over a decade, students and parents in New York City have organized in coalitions across boroughs to fight for an equitable, just school system for all public school students. In a time when the Department of Education (DOE) centralized all power in the hands of one mayor and one schools chancellor, the Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC) and the Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) birthed a unified, powerful educational justice movement led by those most directly impacted by the policies leaving our young people behind. Built off the victories of local organizing in the Bronx and Brooklyn, both UYC and CEJ sought to maximize the power of students and parents to challenge an administration that pushed reforms which marginalized student, parent, and community voices.