posted on: Wednesday, March 17, 2010

By Julia Craig

While we were in L.A. for the release of the most recent Grantmaking for Community Impact Project report, Lisa Ranghelli and I had the chance to catch up with Chris Gabriele of People Organized for Westside Renewal (POWER), a Santa Monica-based grassroots nonprofit focused on promoting affordable housing and education reform. We asked Chris to tell us how the impacts of community organizing extend beyond the victory, especially the ways in which it empowers residents to advocate on their own behalf. He described how a direct action POWER conducted led to new leaders in the community.



Holiday Venice provides 250 affordable rental units in a gentrifying neighborhood and is valued at $73.8 million. This victory was a substantial one for preserving access to low-income housing for residents of Venice.

The victory is more than the dollar amount. As Chris explains in the video, “It’s the transformation that happens within the community leaders. Folks that are normally downtrodden… [thinking] ‘I’m in a community that’s poor, there’s no way that we’re going to win.’ This idea of being able to confront a decision maker, being able to confront something that has had power over you for so long is transforming. And you’ve seen that over the past couple of years since that action in how the leaders who were a part of this action have grown, who have taken on more responsibility, have fostered relationships and cultivated new leaders within their own communities.”

The development of local leadership from the community is one of the key tenets of organizing and is something that sets it apart from other forms of advocacy. Some readers may have been put off by Chris’ description of the direct action event or are uncomfortable with the idea of supporting organizations that utilize confrontational tactics. However, direct action is just that: one tactic used as part of a larger strategy that includes developing leaders and arming individuals with the skill and confidence to take their concerns directly to decision makers.

Julia Craig is research associate at NCRP and co-author with Lisa Ranghelli of Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in Los Angeles.

posted on: Friday, March 12, 2010

By Lisa Ranghelli

A week after presenting our findings on the impressive impacts of grassroots organizing and advocacy in Los Angeles to a hundred foundation and nonprofit leaders, I was reminded that the theme of policy innovation we highlighted there continues to ring true. At the event, I spoke about cutting edge policies community leaders developed in Southern California that were emulated elsewhere, such as community benefits agreements. Dr. Bob Ross, CEO of the California Endowment, who described his foundation’s decision to embrace advocacy and systemic change strategies, noted that “Innovation does not scale without dealing with power.” I interpreted his words to mean that you cannot make real changes to systems and institutions without challenging the powerful, and by bringing community power to bear.

L.A. Voice and the PICO National Network are dealing with power, all right!

L.A. Voice, one of 15 organizations we studied in L.A. County, is taking on the banks. On March 5th, as part of a coalition that includes SEIU, National People's Action and the California Reinvestment Coalition, L.A. Voice and PICO helped convince the Los Angeles City Council to pull city funds from irresponsible banks and set new standards for investing public dollars in institutions that offer tangible benefits to the community.

As L.A. Voice faith leader Nathan French put it, "Banks were created for people. People were not created for banks."

The legislation is designed to ensure that taxpayer money is only invested in banks that actively help families keep their homes, expand lending to small businesses to create jobs, end risky derivative deals that put public services at stake and relieve the city's budget gap. According to PICO, the move will save the city at least $10 million immediately.

PICO and its allies will be organizing in communities across the country to promote similar reforms, meeting power with power to replicate this innovative response to the financial crisis.

Lisa Ranghelli is senior research associate at NCRP and co-author with Julia Craig of Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in Los Angeles County.

posted on: Thursday, February 25, 2010

by Julia Craig

An organizer aboard a Los Angeles bus.

Photo courtesy of Labor/Community Strategy Center Bus Riders Union

Next Tuesday, March 2, NCRP’s Grantmaking for Community Impact Project will release the fourth report from the Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities series on the impacts of advocacy, organizing and civic engagement in Los Angeles County. (Learn more about the three previous reports on New Mexico, North Carolina and Minnesota.) Lisa Ranghelli, Kevin Laskowski and I will blog over the coming weeks to showcase stories from our work in the region.

You’ve probably heard that Los Angeles is not a place known for its public transportation infrastructure. L.A. County is home to 7 million cars and its infamous smog hovers over 650 square miles of freeway. But did you know that there are 500,000 transit riders in the region, and they have a union representing their needs? That’s according to Tammy Bang Luu of The Labor/Community Strategy Center Bus Riders Union (BRU). BRU was founded in 1992 as part of the Strategy Center’s Transportation Policy Group to provide a voice to these transit users. Since then, it has fought to improve public transportation access and build transit equity in the Los Angeles region.

When the Bus Riders Union began, it was a novel concept; no one in the nation had tried to organize transit riders, who are a diverse group of people with varying priorities and backgrounds. BRU has built a multi-lingual, multi-racial organization with 3,000 dues-paying members. Today, there are transit riders unions throughout the country including Austin, Atlanta, Boston and Baltimore.

In 1996, BRU won an unprecedented Consent Decree following a lawsuit against Los Angeles MTA citing racial discrimination in MTA’s transit policies. The suit alleged that MTA violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by establishing a discriminatory, separate, and unequal transportation system while using federal funds. The decree’s provisions lasted until 2001. During that time, BRU had to fight to implement the stipulations of the agreement, which included expanded bus services in centers of employment, fare reductions and the creation of a joint working group with MTA and BRU.

The Consent Decree set the stage for the Bus Riders Union’s ongoing work to hold transit officials accountable and bring the voices of transit users to bear on decision-making. In 2005, BRU won a streamlined process for the student bus pass application procedure. Students save $320 to $380 per year by purchasing a monthly pass instead of an adult pass or paying the full fare each day. Since the implementation of the new procedures, an estimated 20,000 additional eligible students purchase the monthly pass, netting families $47 million in savings over the course of six years.

This is just one example of the ways in which organizations in Los Angeles County are winning policy innovations that improve life for lower-income people, people of color, and other vulnerable communities. Check out the full report, which will be available for free download on our website on March 2, and let us know what you think in the comments!

Julia Craig is research associate and co-author of Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in L.A. County.

To receive notification regarding the release of the report, join our mailing list.

posted on: Thursday, October 08, 2009

by Julia Craig

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University recently released a series of C. S. Mott Foundation-funded case studies profiling the work of nonprofits organizing for school reform across the country. “The Impact of Community and Youth Organizing on School Reform” series examined the strategies of residents of seven urban areas across the country in their efforts to enact local school reforms.

One of the organizations included in the series was the Community Coalition of South Los Angeles. The Annenberg Institute documented the Community Coalition’s work improving access to college preparatory courses at high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

The South L.A. Report profiled one of the students benefitting from access to college preparatory courses. The summary of the Annenberg Institute’s findings illustrated the power that organizing brought to the struggle for equitable access to resources in the school district. Russlyn Ali, executive director of The Education Trust-West said, “I am pretty convinced that no amount of intellectual framing and data and research that we could have provided would have moved the district. We needed the 800-plus Latino and African American parents to mandate rigor. It was organizing unlike anywhere else I’ve seen in the nation.”

Community Coalition co-created the Communities for Educational Equity coalition in 2004, which organized parents and students to demand more equitable distribution of resources and greater accountability from LAUSD. According to the study, organizing accomplished these goals. One school official commented that it was the largest reform the district passed in 20 years. The South L.A. Report talked to Luis Lopez, who graduated in 2008 and now attends UCLA, where he is doing research on South L.A. as part of his studies. He hadn’t even considered college until his senior year, since neither of his parents went. Luis was the valedictorian of his class. Still, upon enrollment in UCLA, he found that he wasn’t prepared for the rigors of a college setting. He looked around and realized he hadn’t had the same opportunities as his new classmates. As he told the South L.A. Report, “[I]f you compare Beverly Hills High to Fremont, one looks like a prison and the other looks like a university.”

The Annenberg Institute’s work to document the effectiveness of education reform organizing complements NCRP’s Grantmaking for Community Impact Project. L.A. County is the fourth site of the project, following New Mexico, North Carolina and Minnesota. Additionally, Community Coalition is one of NCRP’s nonprofit partners and will participate in the research by providing us with data about their work and accomplishments over the past five years. NCRP senior research associate Lisa Ranghelli and I will be working with Community Coalition and 14 other groups in L.A. County documenting their work to educate funders about the value of advocacy and organizing work. We will release the results of our study in early 2010. I hope you’ll watch out for it!

Julia Craig is research associate at NCRP.