United Neighborhoods Plans Drive for Political Muscle

The United Neighborhoods Organization, and its sister community-based groups in the San Gabriel Valley and South-Central Los Angeles, Sunday launched a voter-registration drive and set a multifaceted agenda to tackle such issues as crime, housing and child care.

The immediate goal of the campaign, dubbed “Sign Up, Take Charge” by its leaders, is to register 60,000 voters in Los Angeles County for the Nov. 8 general election.

While nonpartisan, the campaign will register what organizers called “occasional” voters, those who do not ordinarily vote.

“Elections in California are won and lost by 100,000 votes, so we know that 60,000 voters who are committed to our agenda can make a difference” said Marie Krajci, of the East Valleys Organization.

Along with the South-Central Organizing Committee, the church-based community groups claim to represent more than 200,000-member families in the county.

About 1,500 representatives of the organizations attended a rally Sunday at Los Angeles Community College, where precinct leaders were commissioned for each of 903 voting precincts in the county. A team of about five members will be assigned to register voters in each precinct.

The teams also plan to gather about 200,000 signatures from supporters of the groups’ nine-point agenda which, Krajci said, will be used as “leverage” in gaining the support of political leaders.

Noting some of the organizations’ past accomplishments, such as a successful campaign to raise the minimum wage, Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony told the crowd “you won because you were organized and because you believed in the power and intelligence of ordinary men and women.”

And Mahony congratulated them on the launching of their new campaign.

“When half the children in our high schools don’t graduate, we must sign up and take charge,” he said.

“When our city is filled day after day with the senseless slaughter of precious young lives, we must take charge,” he added, in a litany that paraphrased the group’s agenda.

The issues that the groups plan to target over the next two to five years include:

- Auto insurance rates based on geographic location. One plan is to negotiate collective bargaining agreements between members of the three organizations and insurance companies.

- Crime. The groups plan to continue to promote partnerships among law enforcement, school districts and city youth service agencies to provide “safe harbors” for youngsters at public parks and schools.

- Efforts to build homes for low-income people. The organizations have pledged to build 1,000 new single-family homes at a maximum cost of $75,000, by the pooling of public and private resources.

Other agenda items include supporting the disclosure of all storage sites of hazardous materials, supporting efforts to amend the immigration law to prevent the separation of families and lobbying for greater job opportunities, increased funding for public education and child care and for legislation establishing universal health care.