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.
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...
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.
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.
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...
“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.
A Matter of Trust
Although a March 2007 Zogby International poll found that affordable housing was an important election issue, most elected officials have yet to place creating...
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...
Big Island Organizing
An organizing drive in Hawaii has forced the hand of America's largest bank, achieving a breakthrough that has slashed foreclosures.
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...
Black and Brown Tenant Solidarity in Oakland
Last October, Oakland, Calif., passed a Tenant Protection Ordinance. This strong measure defending tenants against the kinds of landlord harassment that often take place...
Philadelphia Campaign Reshapes Homelessness Debate
For the past few years, homeless advocates in Philadelphia have made some remarkable strides in pushing for solutions to homelessness. Several distinct but overlapping...