COMMUNITY CRUSADERS : 3 Groups Wage Hard-Nosed Struggle for Social Change

Woe to him who builds his house on wrong, his terraces on injustice; who works his neighbors without pay, and defrauds them of their just wages.

--Jeremiah 22:13

For Los Angeles’ busiest crusaders of social change, these are heady times. Once shunned by politicians as a belligerent rabble, they celebrated their 10th birthday this year by hiring the Shrine Auditorium. Seven thousand people showed up, including friends like Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and Mayor Tom Bradley.

Time was when their big concern seemed to be the cleaning up the crummy little grocery store down the block. Today they take on issues of national significance, most notably their campaign for a major increase in the $3.35-an-hour minimum wage.

And yet, there are still some grocers who feel their wrath.

Driven by a street-level sense of right and wrong, reinforced by religious faith, the crusaders are members of three church-based groups: the East Los Angeles-based United Neighborhoods Organization (UNO), the South Central Organizing Committee (SCOC), and the fledgling East Valleys Organization (EVO), which operates in the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys.

Mobilizing hundreds of highly disciplined demonstrators in their current campaign, the unique alliance claims a constituency of 200,000 families, a figure derived from the registration of 74 member chapters. Agitation politics remains their specialty.

The vast majority are poor and working-class minorities. UNO and EVO are mostly Latino and mostly Catholic, with a growing Protestant contingent. SCOC is an almost equal mix of Latinos and blacks, Catholics and Protestants. There is an strong Anglo presence as well, especially among the clergy who rally them and the professional organizers who provide training and political expertise.

The groups share the same progressive agenda, hard-nosed strategies, even the same political genealogy. Unlike many other community groups, they are direct descendants of the movement fathered by the late Saul Alinsky, the social reformer who got his start in the 1930s rallying Chicago’s Irish slums into a power bloc and later authored the manifesto, “Rules for Radicals.”

‘Politics . . . From the Bottom Up’

Organized people, the gospel goes, can whip organized money.

“Nobody gives you power. You’ve got to organize to take power. And the people that have power don’t want that,” said Larry McNeil, who is EVO’s lead organizer and an associate director of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). “It’s a new kind of politics we’re building . . . from the bottom up.”

Adding IAF to this alphabet soup puts the movement in sharper focus. Established by Alinsky in 1968, the IAF is, essentially, a nonprofit foundation of professional agitators. For experienced organizers like McNeil, it is indeed a profession, paying about $40,000 a year.

UNO, SCOC and EVO are part of the IAF’s 24-group national network, contracting with the New York-based foundation to organize them and train them in pressure politics.

In Los Angeles, the groups have stirred controversy and made headlines for years with their abrasive, sometimes unorthodox, tactics. They have offended both the traditional power structure and other community groups that share similar ideals.

Several years ago, for example, an angry Mayor Bradley stalked out of a meeting with UNO. He was not the first politician to do so and certainly won’t be the last.

In a recent interview, Mark Ridley-Thomas, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said SCOC is characterized by “high-handedness. Chauvinism. Arrogance. Presumption. Disrespect.”

Notable Track Record

But the movement claims a notable track record.

UNO’s 10-year history includes lowered Eastside auto insurance rates, a home-improvement loan program and the establishment of the Community Youth Gang Services, a gang-intervention agency. SCOC, founded in 1981, has pushed through tough city laws cracking down on loitering and crime at liquor stores and this year led the successful opposition to the controversial initiative that would have taxed Southside residents to pay for extra police. UNO and SCOC sometimes work together, as when they secured more than $1 million in surplus Olympics funds for youth sports programs.

Building on past successes, the movement’s recent growth has been dramatic.

EVO debuted in late 1986 with 10 chapters, spread thin over its vast turf. UNO expanded into Latino neighborhoods in Whittier, Norwalk, Pico Rivera, Huntington Park and Maywood, adding 11 chapters. SCOC expanded into Lynwood, Compton and Carson, adding 19 chapters. In one year, the crusade added about 75,000 families to its constituency, increasing its ethnic and religious diversity in the process.

Organizing in Valley

The movement also reaches beyond churches. UNO includes chapters based at Whittier College and East Los Angeles City College. Workers from Community Youth Gang Services make up chapters in both UNO and SCOC, and SCOC includes a textile workers’ union local as well.

Meanwhile, organizers are tilling the San Fernando Valley. They expect a fourth group to debut there in mid-1988--and are hoping to add Jewish chapters to the mix.

The growth has allowed the movement’s horizons go far beyond the old neighborhood. Their “campaign for a moral minimum wage” is an unprecedented challenge--and a test of the group’s strength.

It is the first time UNO, SCOC and EVO are working together and their most far-reaching cause to date. A major increase--$5.01 an hour is their stated goal--could directly affect as many as 1.5 million California workers, and would probably influence federal policy as well.

Working Double Time

“They are probably the leading voice for the unorganized employee,” said Muriel Morse, a member of the state Industrial Welfare Commission. The commission, which earlier split on a proposal to raise the rate to $4 an hour, is expected to reach a final decision Dec. 18. “And that’s important, because it’s the unorganized employee that needs some help,” Morse said.

So far, big ambitions have not distracted them from problems close by. For now, the three groups seem to be working double time.

In Norwalk and Pico Rivera, for example, UNO is taking Southern Pacific executives to task. Why are your trains always stopping and blocking our streets? Why do our children have to crawl under your trains to get to school?

SCOC is pressuring Compton politicians and property owners to clean up vacant properties. Why all the garbage? Why the broken glass?

And EVO is cutting its political teeth in the same place UNO and SCOC cut theirs--at the corner market.

UNO and SCOC have always had a thing about the local grocery--and EVO is no different. To many in the barrio and the ghetto, there is perhaps no more tangible symbol of economic injustice. The big chains prefer affluent neighborhoods, so the poorest people wind up paying the highest prices for the poorest quality at their neighborhood markets, activists say. To make matters worse, the stores are often dirty.

On a recent night at the Church of the Nativity in El Monte, EVO asked competing grocers to atone for their sins.

Exactly one month earlier, more than 60 crusaders armed with clipboards and pens visited two markets in South El Monte, Carmichael’s and Santa Fe Farms. Both were judged filthy. The owners were told they had one month to make amends.

Don Sullivan, owner of Carmichael’s, was called up to face the crowd. This time, his store passed the follow-up inspection. The crowd applauded, and Sullivan happily signed an informal contract promising to keep his store clean.

Then Tom Uch, owner of Santa Fe Farm’s grocery section, was called up. Firmly, he was told his store had flunked again--that he had not kept a promise to clean it. Humiliated, Uch turned his eyes to the floor. The EVO inspectors, he was told, would be back in one week.

A few days later, Uch’s market was clean.

Looking at EVO, SCOC and UNO today is to see three organizations in very different stages of maturity.

Like the others, EVO has roots in the Catholic Church. Indeed, it is the union of activist Catholic parishes and the IAF organizers that got all three groups going.

After witnessing the successes of UNO and SCOC, priests and nuns and the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys began discussing plans in 1983.

“We felt rather powerless to face the issues that affect a great number of our people,” said Father Peter O’Reilly of the Church of the Nativity.

McNeil, then working for SCOC, helped in the process of long process of organizing and training the clerics. McNeil had previously been working at UNO when he helped get SCOC off the ground.

Churches an Ideal Base

By the time EVO announced itself to the world, with nine Catholic parishes and one Lutheran church, there had already been three years of work. One of Alinsky’s rules was to take time to build a solid foundation. “Our experience is that organizations fail when they start taking on issues too quickly,” McNeil said.

Churches provide an ideal base for three reasons:

--The existing structure and power of the institutions.

--The shared values, a belief in basic dignity, equality and justice.

--The availability of money.

EVO’s first-year budget is $130,000, consisting of $53,000 in dues from member churches, plus grants from the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese and Catholic religious orders. UNO and SCOC also “invested” in their new ally, and a private foundation also provided a grant.

The money pays salaries of the three-member staff, and reimburses IAF for training sessions for members. More than 150 EVO “leaders” have gone through training, including sessions as long as 10 days.

Often the crusaders are absolute beginners.

“These are not your flaming activists. The hard-core activists tend to stay away from us,” McNeil said.

Rather, they are people more like Val Rodriguez, a 37-year-old vocational education teacher.

Rodriguez has lived in South El Monte 24 years. And for 24 years, he says, he has watched it go downhill.

“For years I talked about doing something for my community but I never really knew how to do it,” Rodriguez said. “This organization has shown me how to stand up and be heard.”

SCOC members might think that EVO let the grocer off easy. One time, SCOC invited a market owner, sat him down and then staged a little skit. People dressed in black portrayed the cockroaches infesting his produce.

SCOC often rubs people the wrong way. Of the three groups, it is the most controversial.

When a group of Catholic Anglo clerics and an Anglo organizer were drumming up support for a new organization, most of the community’s Protestant, black Establishment wasn’t buying.

Mark Ridley-Thomas of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference remembers those discussions.

The organizing effort “was a statement that the leadership of the black community was derelict,” he said. “Because it (was) white people communicating this to black people about black leadership . . . (the situation was) presumptuous at best, racist at worst.”

‘This Is a New Day’

“We were the whiteys,” recalled Sister Dianne Donoghue of St. Vincent Church, a founder of SCOC. “They’d say, where were you in the ‘60s?

“You’d have to take your lumps for that. We’d say, hey, you’re right. But this is a new day and we’re inviting you in.”

A few accepted. SCOC started with 10 Catholic and three Episcopalian churches, a mix of Latino and blacks. At first they didn’t do much. But then they scored victories with the markets, liquor stores, anti-crime legislation and Olympics funds.

After six years of work and growth, black leaders such as Urban League President John Mack and NAACP Los Angeles President Raymond Johnson say SCOC has developed into a strong, positive force in the community.

At the same time, they suggest that SCOC is often too single-minded in its focus on issues. They portray SCOC as something of a loner, shunning coalition politics in favor of its confrontational approach.

‘Soweto Tax’ Drive

One exception was Councilman Robert Farrell’s initiative to create a special tax assessment district to increase police in the Southside. Using Urban League offices and phones, SCOC members waged a strong campaign against what they labeled “the Soweto tax” after a black township in South Africa. They excoriated Farrell at every opportunity.

Some suggest that the SCOC exaggerates its role in the campaign. McNeil disagrees. “When we started out on that, and people started asking questions, there was no clear consensus,” he said. “People were suffering. They needed more police.”

Under pressure--and after pushing through an increase of 250 police officers in the council budget--Farrell ultimately called on voters to reject the initiative he authored.

The political damage was done, and Farrell is now the target of a recall effort.

Shunning electoral endorsements is another Alinsky rule. The groups hold “accountability nights” but make no announcements of support. Cozy relations with politicians are perceived as an evil because it is too easy to forgive a friend.

‘Black Power, White Control’

While acknowledging some of SCOC’s successes--and belittling some others--one who does not mute his criticism is Ridley-Thomas.

He portrays SCOC as “black power, white control,” suggesting that the leadership lies in the paid staff and Anglo clerics.

But SCOC organizers flatly reject that view.

“The leadership has never been white,” replied Larry Fondation, the Anglo organizer of SCOC. “Some of the clergy is, some of the staff is. But the leadership isn’t.”

Donoghue and Fondation say the goal all along has been to be a multi-ethnic, multilingual, ecumenical organization. Recently, George Givens became SCOC’s first black staff organizer.

Several black ministers involved with SCOC see strength in the diversity. Unlike many of the old-line black groups, they suggest, SCOC may better reflect the changing Southside. As more and more blacks move out, more Latinos are moving in.

The Rev. Bill Johnson, a black minister at Curry Temple CME Church in Compton, whiched joined SCOC this summer, says the diversity enhances the group’s clout. The unity of blacks and Latinos serves to undercut efforts by established power structure to play one group off the other.

And, contrary to Ridley-Thomas’ view, Johnson says the SCOC leadership rests in its “grass-roots” members, not in its staff. The IAF training, he said, helps them assert their potential.

Johnson, who moved from Memphis to Compton only 14 months ago, has been one of the leaders on the minimum wage campaign. A former president of the Memphis NAACP, Johnson said he prefers the SCOC approach.

“It’s really action-oriented, really trying to get things done. SCOC initiates action, rather than just reacts.”

National Medical Enterprises has a plan. Working with the USC School of Medicine, the giant medical firm wants to build a major private teaching hospital on the Eastside, not far from where Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center is now.

So one day late last year the hospital planners put in a call to UNO.

“This was kind of a first,” Dan Saenz, UNO co-chairman, said with a smile. “For a major corporation to call us. . . . “ He shook his head.

“We felt maybe we could work together,” Saenz said.

UNO, he said, has sought assurances that the hospital would reserve jobs and training programs for Eastside residents.

A group that once had to badger politicians and corporate heads is now an acknowledged power.

“Some people say we are the Establishment,” Saenz said, still smiling.

‘Now We Have Credentials’

But UNO has been true to itself, he maintains. Perhaps the group is less belligerent than in the old days, but perhaps belligerence isn’t as necessary.

“In the beginning we had no credentials. Now we have credentials.”

Of the three groups, UNO is the oldest, largest and most respected. It also has the most money. The 1987 budget is $215,000, compared to SCOC’s $195,000. The sense of UNO as part of the establishment is underscored by its list of corporate “investors”:

Security Pacific National Bank, $5,000; Southern California Edison, $5,000; Bullock’s, $5,000; Carnation Co., $5,000; K mart Corp., $4,000; Pacific Bell, $2,500; Pacific Telesis, $2,500; Carter Hawley Hale Stores, $2,000. And so on.

In all, $43,500 came from such sources.

Two others are Safeway Stores Inc., $5,000, and Boys Market, $4,000. One of UNO’s early victories was to persuade Safeway to open a store in East Los Angeles.

‘No Strings Attached’

This isn’t charity, and it isn’t a payoff, Saenz maintains.

“They are making an investment in the community,” Saenz said. “We’re very up front: There’s no strings attached.”

UNO’s vision of itself these days is reflected in such efforts as the Genesis project, an ambitious pilot project that also involves SCOC, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

The Genesis project addresses the problem of high school dropouts and teen-age unemployment. The goal is a system in which students who maintain good grades and attendance are assured of jobs upon graduation. One UNO staff member, Victor Griego, and a team of volunteers, have been freed from the minimum wage campaign to work full time on the project.

“The reason we’ve been successful,” Larry McNeil said recently, “is what we haven’t done. Most organizations kill themselves by taking on issues they can’t win.”

The crusaders decided to take on the minimum wage fight after surveys of UNO and SCOC members shows that 40% to 50% of the members made $5 an hour or less. Many made less than minimum wage.

“We said, why don’t we become the bargaining unit for the minimum wage worker?” Then, in a rare moment of pessimism, McNeil added, “This may be a mistake. . . . The power on the other side is enormous.”

But that was before they visited that old standby--the grocery store. This was a big grocery store--Ralphs. Three hundred crusaders were planning to picket, mill about the store and tie up check stands by making a small number of purchases--with thousands of pennies.

Ralphs Breaks Ranks

But it turned into a victory rally when Ralphs broke corporate ranks by endorsing a “substantial” increase in the minimum wage. A few days later, Boys Market took an identical stand. A large number of smaller businesses--including hundreds of small, independent grocers--had already signed on to the crusaders’ full goal of $5.01 an hour.

Suddenly, the other side doesn’t seem quite so powerful.

“What’s important is the end, though,” Ralph Gilmer said. “Not the start.”

Gilmer is a contractor who lives in Ladera Heights now but still attends church in his old neighborhood. A member of SCOC, he is part of a team that lobbies corporate heads for support on the minimum wage.

“The needs of the poor,” he said, “should take priority over the desires of the rich. . . . See, myself, I do very well. But I know where I come from.”