Department of Community Organizing
Kudos newly elected Public Advocate Bill de Blasio!
Mr. de Blasio has announced the creation of a department of community organizing to help put the grassroots back in New York's democracy. Read the New York Times story here. With our Mayor regularly (and sometimes crankily) telling us what's good for us instead of asking what people think, it's positively invigorating to see the Public Advocate and the newly elected members of the City Council standing up to say that communities deserve the right to shape the forces that affect their neighborhoods and quality of life. Many of us miss the days of Mark Green, who served as Public Advocate from 1994 through 2001, and repeatedly stood up to the excesses and bad policies of the Giuliani years.
But it's not just about being angry at the Mayor. Imagine a world where government actually listens and encourages meaningful participation. Many communities have great visions and plans of their own. Among many pressing issues, city government should be paying attention and working with local communities to strengthen and improve public schools, create an afforadable housing plan with teeth, and protect the rights of workers to organize in all parts of our economy. One issue on which Mayor Bloomberg has been great has been supporting the aspirations of New York's City immigrant communities.
At North Star Fund and among our network of colleague organizations in the foundation and grassroots activist worlds, we have seen what's possible. And we know that democracy doesn't spring from nowhere. It comes from citizens pulling together the resources-- time, energy, and yes, money-- to knock on doors, organize meetings, train leaders, build organizations and work with policy wonks to craft solutions to improve their community.
Public Advocate de Blasio is ideally positioned to help local leaders understand how policy and politics work at City Hall and in Albany. I also hope the Public Advocate will rally more of the foundation world to make even more resources available to organizing. As Pierre Hauser, a trustee of the Daphne Foundation and a new North Star Fund board member has put it: "In helping to run the Daphne Foundation for 17 years, I've always been disappointed by the reluctance of fellow foundations to support community organizing. Usually the excuse is that it's hard to measure the impact of organizing." Click here for three great stories from North Star Fund's 2009 annual report about the impact of community organizing.
From my seat as North Star Fund's Executive Director, a note of caution to Public Advocate de Blasio is to follow one of the golden rules of community organizers: build on existing leadership and what infrastructure is already in place.
North Star Fund is part of a funders collaborative that provides organizing, leadership and organizational training that will help more community members take a direct stake in how our government operates. So often the training programs are in place. What's lacking is the resources for groups to build their organizational strength. We look forward to partnering with you to breathe even more life into grassroots action in the greatest city in the world.
