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...
Gaining Ground by Holding Back
Late last year, St. Louis ACORN members learned that Regional Hospital – the city's only "safety net" hospital that guaranteed care regardless of ability...
Getting New Jersey to Divest from Payday Lending
NJ Citizen Action says having a state pension fund invested, even indirectly, in a form of lending illegal in the state cannot stand.
Improving Schools from the Bottom Up
Two years ago, when Oakland ACORN was considering a new citywide initiative, members voiced one concern loud and clear: the poor conditions of the...
Persistence Pays
Employees of Erickson Cosmetics Company (makers of Banana Boat lotion) only wanted what they had earned. Especially workers like Juana Vasquez who worked at...
Divide and Conquer
In its one and a half years, the New York City Coalition for the Preservation of Gardens (known as the Garden Coalition) has worked...
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...
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...
New CDC Trade Association Lays Infrastructure
As sequestration takes hold and Congress wrestles with FY 2014 budget negotiations, the affordable housing and community development field is in a fragile state....
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,...
Organizing with the State on Your Side
In California, municipalities are required by law to plan for their fair share of affordable housing. Has this put housing advocates out of a...
Grassroots Advocacy Strengthens Housing Trust Fund
Washington state housing activists came together in 1997 to launch the Housing Our Community Campaign to increase the state Housing Trust Fund (HTF) to...
Homeownership Counselors—And Organizers, Too!
Northwest Side Housing Center combines counseling and organizing to empower homeowners facing foreclosure.
A Decade of Growth
Institution-based community organizations tackle the challenges of the new millennium at the local, state, and national level
A Surprising Victory
When business leaders in St. Louis withdrew financial support for a campaign to pass a badly needed transit tax, it was a blessing in disguise.
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.
Involving union welfare office workers in welfare organizing
The Organization of the NorthEast (ONE) has over 70 members: religious congregations, social service agencies, ethnic associations and businesses from three diverse lakefront Chicago...
Thirsty for Justice
Some 200 miles from the Mexican border, residents of New Mexico’s 23-year-old Pajarito Mesa community pay taxes but lack essential services like roads, electricity...
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...
How the Bay Area Got $2 Billion for Affordable Homes
San Francisco Bay Area voters approved bold new investments in 2016 after housing advocates--part of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California--ignited a successful electoral strategy for the general election. Here's how it worked.