Walkabout: Grass-roots efforts feel like uphill fight to preserve city
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Jim Cunningham (center), a life-long community organizer and teacher, flanked by Rick Swartz (left), executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., and Carl Redwood, chair of the Hill Consensus Group.
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Most people who lead neighborhood advocacy groups know that if you want to get anything done, you have to gather a knot of strong residents, devise a good plan, get professional advice and then grab the city "leaders" by their collars.
Community organizing has been the work of Jim Cunningham's adult life -- that and teaching it, from the late 1950s until his retirement some years ago. Mr. Cunningham mentored a slew of young people at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Social Work after having spent years as a community organizer in Chicago.
One of his students, Rick Swartz, went to work in 1980 as the head of an already solid little organization of volunteers called the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp.
Mr. Cunningham invited Mr. Swartz and Carl Redwood, a community organizer who directs the Hill District Consensus Group, to speak at the most recent installment of the monthly Lobby Lecture Series at University Square in Oakland.
It was invigorating to hear their stories about bringing power to the people. That overarching right of the people to have the government they deserve is playing out in the Middle East today. It played out in the '50s and '60s in our own streets, at lunch counters, on the Washington Mall and on campuses.
But government has a way of drifting back to the moneyed, back to the influential and away from the struggle of the people.
Specific to Mr. Swartz and Mr. Redwood, their organizations had to tug -- and keep having to tug -- elected officials to acknowledge the need for quality of life in the neighborhoods.
Serving that common good is the most important job politicians have, yet people get burned out on community activism because they don't get the support they need, while their neighborhoods struggle at the same time that professional sports teams receive millions and developers get perks.
In cities, activists have an almost impossible task because most work at day jobs while trying to get someone to come to the rescue of the neighborhood's tenuous hold on stability. Crime ticks upward, "For sale" signs appear, people move out and politicians have more social issues on their hands. Except that their hands are otherwise occupied.
First Published September 6, 2011 12:00 am
