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
We who have a legacy of neighborhood action and a lived understanding of racial justice must become the next generation of Occupy.
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.
Big Island Organizing
An organizing drive in Hawaii has forced the hand of America's largest bank, achieving a breakthrough that has slashed foreclosures.
Housing Advocates Track Indoor Environmental Hazards to Spur Improvements
When the community health promoters of San Diego’s Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) say they’re doing pollution testing, many people probably imagine samples from the...
Not Another Parking Lot
Fight City Hall - and WIN!
It took almost a year, but solid strategic planning and tenacious grassroots organizing paid off for affordable housing activists...
596 Acres creates tools to help neighbors “Find the lot of their lives” by:
596 Acres creates tools to help neighbors “Find the lot of their lives” by:
making municipal information about vacant public land available online through a...
“No Evictions. We Won’t Move!”
"This land is too valuable to permit poor people to park on it."
—Justin Herman, former executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1970
The...
Injecting Racial Equity into an Election Cycle in St. Louis
A group of 10 St. Louis organizations joined together to encourage mayoral candidates to address racial equity and make it a focal point in an election.
Homeless Revolution
An organization of homeless New Yorkers rallied residents of Harlem and Manhattan to stand up and take notice of the city's long-standing practice of warehousing vacant properties.
Economic Rights are Human Rights
Families with nowhere else to go often wind up staying at a modest row house on a side street off Kensington Avenue, a downtrodden,...
Tenderloin Senior Organizing Project
"It's hard to do this – I was scared," said Robin King, one of the younger women living in a building organized by the...
Putting “Community” Back in “CRA”
The Community Reinvestment Act and regulators have been unable to hold banks accountable to distant and distinct local communities—so nonprofits have stepped in to do the heavy lifting.
Vertical Integration
When Vickie Stapleton’s landlord announced his intention to terminate his project-based Section 8 contract with HUD last year, she got nervous. “A lot of...
Fighting for Worker's Rights in Maine
Years of alleged wage, immigration, safety, and civil rights violations, environmental sanctions, and other infractions at the DeCoster egg farm in Turner, Maine, have...