Before Khalida Smalls began working as an organizer at Alternatives for Communities and Environment in 1997, she didn't know what community organizing was.
"I'd never heard of, seen or spoken with a community organizer," she said.
Now coordinator of the Transit Riders Union, Smalls is one of dozens of community organizers in Boston working on social justice issues. And the issues go far beyond fighting fare increases.
"Members of the Transit Riders Union have issues that go way beyond transportation," Smalls said. "If we're working on housing issues or rent control, we work with other groups that are working on the same things."
So it was that when activists in Chinatown were fighting developers seeking to build a large, multistory condo complex in Chinatown last year, Smalls and other activists from Lower Roxbury, Dorchester and Jamaica Plain were on hand to man the picket lines, demanding more affordable housing for the neighborhood.
The Chinatown rally illustrated two emerging trends in social justice: the increased presence of community organizers and an increased tendency among organizers to work on issues outside of their core area.
While community organizers were a common feature of Boston's civic life in the 1960s when activists like Byron Rushing, Chuck Turner and Mel King brought South End and Roxbury residents together to fight issues ranging from garbage collection to community control of public land.
In the 1980s, however, many of those activists moved away from organizing to politics or to assume leadership positions in the community-based organizations that were founded in the '70s. And many organizations themselves similarly moved away from their mission of community organizing.
"In the end they became service providers," said Boston Foundation Director of Grantmaking, Angel Bermudez. "Many CDCs became dependent on development fees."
In the '90s, that process began to reverse as community activists became more acutely aware of the lack of organizing in the city.
The Boston Foundation, which had began funding organizing initiatives in 1987, launched a more aggressive program to fund community organization in 1993.
At the same time, CDCs themselves began to reverse the trend as the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations initiated its Ricanne Hadrian Initiative on Organizing, a program that funneled funding for organizing to individual CDCs.
The RHICO program, which kicked off in 1998, is aimed at incorporating resident empowerment into the core mission of participating CDCs.
"Basically, if you're trying to build any kind of movement, or any kind of power, at the heart of it are the people who live in the community," says Nancy Marks, director of organizing at MACDC. "Many CDCs have learned that they can produce more housing and win more victories with organizing."
Under the RHICO model, organizers at CDCs call the residents of the neighborhoods they serve "leaders." The residents' concerns drive the organizing efforts and, by extension, the CDCs' agendas.
"The goal of organizing in general is knowing who's at the table and making sure everyone's voice is heard," Marks says.
While affordable housing is the number one issue in Lawrence, board member Florencia Otero says the Lawrence CDC is also working on educational issues. With 33 percent of the predominantly Latino population under the age of 18, after school programs, tutoring and college preparatory programs are a priority.
"All the programs are created with the community," she said. "And that way we identify where the greatest need is."
Marks notes that not all CDCs have embraced the organizing-driven model of community development.
"Some CDCs tend to play more of an insider's game," she said. "But putting 50 units of housing in your community doesn't necessarily create leaders in the community who are invested in the community."
Because CDCs and other community-based organizations depend on city and state funding, many are hesitant to challenge city officials on issues of concern to their constituencies, according to Horace Small, who heads the Union of Minority Neighborhoods.
"In some organizations you have directors who are nervous about empowerment," he said. "Some organizers just attend meetings and report back to the executive director. Some function like planners. Some get down and dirty and really do organizing."
Smalls, who hosts regular trainings for community organizers, says organizing has become more sophisticated in recent years.
"Organizing has gone from organizing people on the issues that effect them to organizing and helping people understand the power they have, to `let's form a coalition,'" he said. "Organizing is nothing more than relationship-building."
Organizers have assembled coalitions on everything from affordable housing to education. For the last two years the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation has organized a get-out-the-vote effort in conjunction with the Hyde Square Task Force and City Life/Vida Urbana.
Marks says the broader focus adopted by organizers ultimately empowers the people they serve.
"CDCs need for their leaders to feel that they're part of something bigger and to understand the issues and know what the solutions are state-wide," she said.
Photograph (Community organizers)
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