Grassroots Democracy In Bloom
As a community organizer for Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN), my job is to help build a community organization with the skill, guts and determination to fight for its neighborhoods. The fight is difficult because the coin of the realm in the halls of government and the suites of the private sector is money--the one thing we do not have. Yet sometimes, despite the odds against you, everything goes right.
On Wednesday SUN learned that Rep. James T. Walsh had accepted our invitation to discuss low-income families' struggles with high heat bills. On Thursday our leadership team, four local resident volunteers, held a long meeting to prepare the agenda and rehearse their roles. On Friday we identified three additional residents that could relate their personal stories dealing with high heat bills. We felt the Congressman needed to hear about the sacrifices that families are making when they are forced to pay 2-3x's the cost of last year's heat bills--often on fixed incomes. On Saturday, everything came together.
The personal stories were heartfelt and powerful. The stories were buttressed by three additional residents. This was no bitch session--this was a chance to speak the truth to power.
SUN's leaders (leader is a term we use for the resident volunteers that take active roles in a public meeting or action) then made five specific demands of the Congressman for effective actions he could take in Washington to help families deal with heat bills:
1) Support an upcoming supplemental spending bill to add $1 billion to the HEAP and Weatherization budgets.
2) Oppose the proposed Bush cut of 20% to the Community Development Block Grant budget in FY 2007--the major source of home repair loans to families in our neighborhoods.
3) Work with SUN to eliminate a glitch in the Weatherization program that allows landlords to receive partial benefits, while denying these same partial benefits to middle income/owner-occupants.
4) Work with SUN to create a task force of residents, financial institutions, government agencies and technology experts to work toward the goal of making every home in the city weatherized and energy efficient.
5) Support a windfall profits tax on oil & natural gas companies to help pay for some of these initiatives.
Rep. Walsh unreservedly agreed to the first four demands and said he would look at the fifth seriously.
This meeting was a major accomplishment, pulled off in a very short period of time and run to perfection by the type of grassroots folks that everyone usually writes about as disaffected, alienated and out of touch with mainstream democratic institutions. This was grassroots democracy in full bloom, on a cold and blustery day in the snowiest city in America.
On Wednesday SUN learned that Rep. James T. Walsh had accepted our invitation to discuss low-income families' struggles with high heat bills. On Thursday our leadership team, four local resident volunteers, held a long meeting to prepare the agenda and rehearse their roles. On Friday we identified three additional residents that could relate their personal stories dealing with high heat bills. We felt the Congressman needed to hear about the sacrifices that families are making when they are forced to pay 2-3x's the cost of last year's heat bills--often on fixed incomes. On Saturday, everything came together.
The personal stories were heartfelt and powerful. The stories were buttressed by three additional residents. This was no bitch session--this was a chance to speak the truth to power.
SUN's leaders (leader is a term we use for the resident volunteers that take active roles in a public meeting or action) then made five specific demands of the Congressman for effective actions he could take in Washington to help families deal with heat bills:
1) Support an upcoming supplemental spending bill to add $1 billion to the HEAP and Weatherization budgets.
2) Oppose the proposed Bush cut of 20% to the Community Development Block Grant budget in FY 2007--the major source of home repair loans to families in our neighborhoods.
3) Work with SUN to eliminate a glitch in the Weatherization program that allows landlords to receive partial benefits, while denying these same partial benefits to middle income/owner-occupants.
4) Work with SUN to create a task force of residents, financial institutions, government agencies and technology experts to work toward the goal of making every home in the city weatherized and energy efficient.
5) Support a windfall profits tax on oil & natural gas companies to help pay for some of these initiatives.
Rep. Walsh unreservedly agreed to the first four demands and said he would look at the fifth seriously.
This meeting was a major accomplishment, pulled off in a very short period of time and run to perfection by the type of grassroots folks that everyone usually writes about as disaffected, alienated and out of touch with mainstream democratic institutions. This was grassroots democracy in full bloom, on a cold and blustery day in the snowiest city in America.
