Walking New York City’s Streets

Samiya Bashir — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:47:50 +0000

Community Voices Heard was bustling on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 21st.

I had just walked in from the busy New York subway system only to be met by an even busier canvass team. Alfredo Carrasquillo, Ferdinand Joseph, Cha’ta Green, Demitrus Gonzales, Philneia Timmons, and Ann Valdez—the CVH Queens canvassers—were collecting their pledge cards, nonpartisan voter guides, and know your rights handouts and ready to hit the streets.

“I am a voice for the voiceless,” said Joseph, a 55-yr old man from the Bronx about why he walks with CVH on this campaign. “I’ll stick my neck out for them. Tenants who live in these projects have issues that need to be addressed and they’re looking for someone to show them how to get it done. In the buildings they live in, there are a lot of problems like tenant issues, no hot water, no heat, and the land lord doesn’t do anything. They feel like they’ve been forgotten.”

What campaign drives Joseph, and the rest of the walk team, into New York City public housing developments to knock on doors and speak to the residents? November 4th, CVH is asking voters to send a message to the next New York State Senator: it’s time to get serious about funding public housing.

CVH’s canvassers are holding conversations with the residents of public housing about the stakes involved in the upcoming senatorial race. They are informing them that the next state senator will have the power to determine how much funding New York State will provide for NYCHA in NYC. They are letting people know that the State Senator can improve the conditions in public housing, and in order for their issues to be heard, they need to show them that they’re voting.

While I was at one of the doors with Alfredo “Red” Carrarasquillo in a Queens public housing development, I had the opportunity to listen to the passionate concerns of such a resident. When Red asked the voter to fill out a pledge card telling the candidates about the concerns of public housing residents, the person wrote, “Everything. Rent, lack of services for youth, and maintenance.” A conversation between Red and the resident ensued. They both understood the realities of living in public housing and could relate to each other on a deeper level about the issues each was facing.

After we left the door, Red turned to me with an ear to ear smile. The resident was very receptive to the message Red delivered. When I asked him why he was smiling he said, “It feels good as hell. It feels like we’ve been friends for years. It’s beautiful.”

Flash forward to Thursday, October 23rd. I am headed on a moving train to Yonkers with Sarah Thomason, the CVH community organizer in Westchester. We are meeting up with two CVH members to walk public housing developments.

“Right now we have a campaign in Yonkers around issues of community development and gentrification,” Sarah explains to me. “They are building developments that low-income people can’t afford and are being pushed out. There’s a lot of affordable housing that’s being lost. So we are fighting for the development to include low-income apartments, to train and hire Yonkers residents, and we’re asking city council to put conditions on the money to preserve public housing. Whoever wins, if they see that we turned out 500 low-income residents, it can definitely be a deciding factor.”

The development Sarah is referring to is planned for Chicken Island and Getty Square. The City Council is about to take a vote on the development and the plan doesn’t include housing or jobs for low-income residents.

It is this very reason that motivates Valerie Pearson, a CVH member and recently elected board member, to speak to her neighbors on this very chilly Thursday evening.

“I am door knocking because the election is coming up and I want the community in Yonkers to get out to vote because voting makes a difference. If we don’t vote, then nothing gets done.”

When we are at the doors, I am struck by her style. She is warm, but frank, and the residents respond positively to her message.

“My style is called burning down the house. I say listen, this is what’s going on. I know you’re tired, I know you work. But at this rate, if they don’t hear our voices, if they don’t know we’re listening, if they don’t know we’re watching, they’re gonna do what they want to do. And we have to stick together at this point in time. It’s crucial. I just tell him do it for your kids, do it for your grandkids. And they can hold it in their hearts that their mom did that, their grandma did that. And it’s important. We work hard. We pay the most taxes. And why shouldn’t we live.”

From these two distinct experiences, I had the fortune of witnessing CVH’s message in action. Community Voices Heard mission is about bringing low-income people together to work collectively for social change. They build their leadership from the people directly affected by the issues and by doing so are building power in these very communities. The strategies I saw employed during these days, i.e. leadership development, voter engagement, and grassroots volunteer recruitment, leads me to believe they will succeed in pushing those in power to implement more fair and equitable policies in New York City and Yonkers!

Here are more great pics from our Walk:

South by Southwest: Report back from Texas

Samiya Bashir — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:53:42 +0000

“The knowledge and experience our three sister organizations (CVH, S. Echo and SWOP) bring to table is invaluable. This type of sharing and work is a corner stone to our learning and vital for building a strong movement.”
– Genaro Rendon

SWOP, CVH and Southern Echo, three Pushback Network anchor organizations from New Mexico, New York and Mississippi respectively, went to San Antonio Feb. 15-16 to support the Southwest Workers Union (SWU) in its 2-day training entitled, “’Mobilizing Grassroots Voting Power”. We had members of the Pushback Network collaborating together to assist a key grassroots network in a fourth state to build their organizing process from the bottom up. This assistance actually arose out of the SWU, SWOP and Echo South x Southwest Experiment that focused on building black-brown bridges across the south and southwest. Through this Experiment, the Pushback Network developed a relationship with SWU. All in all, a great time was had by all.

SWU was most interested in hearing how New Mexico, Mississippi and New York explained their different models of grassroots community organizing, both historically and programmatically, and how each state brought their community into the political process. SWU’s goal was both to understand what others have done and to see what it could take from each of the models that would be most useful in the south Texas context. What was interesting to me was that SWU was not seeking a singular black and white roll out of do-this and do-that, but an opportunity to obtain a more complex overview of vision and strategy, as well as the critical details of program, to assess the best that each of the models had to offer that flowed from the variety of approaches and experiences based on their different circumstances.

The Texas process brings to life one of the principal values that we projected from the outset as a goal of the Pushback process, and also in the South x Southwest process. The question was, can we build bottom up grassroots models of work that would not only further the work in our own states, but be useful to like-minded communities in other states? I think the answer is affirmative.

Reported to Pushbacknetwork.org by Mike Sayer, Southern Echo, MS

Pushback Network » CVH

Walking New York City’s Streets

South by Southwest: Report back from Texas