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Organizing
Community development relies on policies, resources, and recognition that were won by decades of organizing—and organizing remains essential to face new threats, preserve existing wins, and continue to fight back against the big lie that the way things are is inevitable.
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How State Coalitions Are Advancing Community Ownership of Housing
In recent years, housing coalitions promoting community land trusts and real estate cooperatives have formed in multiple cities and states—and they are achieving results. Nonetheless, a lot of work is needed to achieve the policy changes these groups desire.
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On Progressives and Picket Lines
The story was very different, depending who told it. To the organizers of the I'M HOME and National Manufactured Homeowners' Assocation conferences, news that the Seattle Olive 8 hotel, which they had booked for their annual conferences this past November, was under boycott by the hotel workers union UNITE HERE for refusing to allow workers […]
Walking Away: What Happens When a Project Can’t Be Completed?
As children, many of us grew up hearing from our parents that we must, “finish what we started.” Whether we stalled on a math assignment or scooped too much food onto our dinner plate, we were instructed to keep going until we were done. Certainly, this lesson provides some guidance for events to come later […]
After a Long Impasse, A Win for Dudley Street?
In the film Gaining Ground, about the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a powerful community planning and organizing group in Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, one of the major story lines involves the Kroc Community Center. In a nutshell, the Salvation Army got a huge amount of money to build community centers around the country, and wanted […]
Reclaiming America on Columbus Day
As a college sophomore in October of 1968, I marched as part of the ROTC color guard at the front of the Columbus Day parade in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. Those were challenging times for our country. I chose to leave ROTC less than a year later as protests against the Vietnam War called our […]
Winning a Land Bank We Can Trust
Lessons from Philadelphia’s Campaign to Take Back Vacant Land
Getting Rid of the Middleman
A Brooklyn organization discovers that helping its constituents form worker cooperatives tackles poverty and social isolation in a way traditional job readiness training can’t.
Suitcases and Shopping Carts:Â Lessons from Recent Labor Victories
This week, the Hyatt Hotels Corporation agreed to pay $1 million to the 98 housekeepers who were fired and replaced by lower-paid workers five years ago. A few weeks earlier, employees of the Market Basket family-owned grocery store chain returned to work after over a month of protests helped to reinstate the ousted, worker-friendly CEO. […]
An Organizer’s Work Is Never Done
An unprecedented local hiring win is a stepping stone in a trajectory to turn workforce development on its head.
Congress Misses AmeriCorps’ 20th Birthday
AmeriCorps turned 20 on September 12th. To celebrate, the agency had an immensely successful Thunderclap campaign that reached over 51 million people on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. It was the 4th most popular Thunderclap campaign so far. Now I’m an old dog still learning new social media tricks so I didn’t know what a Thunderclap […]
All Hands on Deck: Bringing Universities More into the Fold
(with Sheryl Verlaine Whitney) If there was one phrase heard more than any other during our work at HUD, it was “All hands on deck.” (Actually, it was second only to “Are you kidding me?”). In virtually every situation, whether it was implementing programs in response to the housing crisis, getting Recovery Act funds allocated […]