Government-Funded Organizing?
Public funding for community organizing would strengthen our democracy and re-legitimize a beleaguered public sector. It's time to stop writing off the idea.
A Decade of Growth
Institution-based community organizations tackle the challenges of the new millennium at the local, state, and national level
Winning a Land Bank We Can Trust
Lessons from Philadelphia's Campaign to Take Back Vacant Land
Affordable, But for Whom?
How a box of felt pieces helps organizers help New York communities advocate for their real affordable housing needs
City Life and Occupy: A Developing Relationship
This past August, a broad new coalition in Boston formed to plan a massive march against Bank of America and other corporate targets on...
Cross-Community Collaboration on NYC’s Municipal ID Program
Lack of identification hurts many different groups in different ways—from the homeless to immigrants, and they all need to be considered in the fight for an alternative.
Occupying Occupy: Lessons from Central Brooklyn
A few months ago I was scheduled to moderate a panel on how the Occupy movement would affect the foreclosure crisis happening in New...
Fighting Gentrification Through Collective Bargaining
For the past two years, the Crown Heights Tenant Union of Brooklyn has turned collective bargaining strategies on landlords—and policymakers.
Greater Boston Interfaith Organization
Massachusetts has one of the nation’s worst housing cost problems. Its rents and home prices have risen at one of the steepest rates in...
Flipping the Script
A nonprofit forgoes the typical community meeting for a "living charrette," which leads to greater neighborhood feedback about a proposed 24-acre development in Austin, Texas.
Walking the Walk
In a city full of problems and promise, I'm taking the first steps toward learning up close what community organizing can accomplish.
A Guide for Tenants on Leadership and Building Control
Renters in Washington, DC’s Shaw neighborhood have a little extra help these days as they organize to improve their living conditions – and maybe...
Park 1 – Stadium 0: The People Win!
In April 1996 residents of Newark's Ironbound neighborhood – an old industrial area now home to a thriving immigrant population – read in a...
Once a Landmark, Always a Landmark
The Winthrop, a grand hotel converted to affordable housing in the 1970s, was at the center of a conflict between the city’s hopes for...
Helping the Mayor Get Your Way
“We need more buses!” That’s what organizers with Miami’s congregation-based organizing group PACT (People Acting for Community Together) heard loud and clear as they...
Organizing to Build a Movement
In December 1994, President Bill Clinton proposed converting public housing and project-based Section 8 into vouchers. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Congressman Rick Lazio...
Occupy Wall Street: A New Wave of Fair Housing Activism?
Is there a new community reinvestment movement afoot?
Bringing Down the Barriers to Enrollment in Federal Programs
Constance Etheridge went to the Department of Social Services office in South Carolina for a simple reason: she and her children were hungry and...
Housing Is Health: Ballot Initiatives in California Approved
A conversation with three county supervisors who were instrumental in moving affordable housing ballot measures forward in the California Bay Area by bringing in the health factor.
A Word of Caution: The Forgotten Photograph
The trouble with many of us, and with our culture as a whole, is that we don’t take time to “relate,” to connect formally...