In-Your-Face Activist Group UNO Marks Two Decades

The leaders of UNO--the United Neighborhoods Organization--had their “guest” right where they wanted him recently, in front of a noisy crowd of 1,200 members demanding that he give the correct answer to their question.

The issue put to Richard Rogers, the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s top official in L.A., was this: Would he commit to eliminating a backlog of 230,000 applications for U.S. citizenship by September so the new citizens would be eligible to vote in November?

His replies of “I’ll do my best” and “I’ll try” didn’t mollify the restless crowd that crammed into a meeting hall at Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church in East L.A.

Persistent barbs finally prompted Rogers to declare for all to hear: “If you want to interpret my statements as a ‘yes,’ that’s up to you.”

Then, without hesitation, UNO leaders declared victory. And the 1,200 cheered wildly.

Rogers was only the latest public official to get the in-your-face treatment that has become UNO’s trademark over the years. In the last two decades, officials from former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. to L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan have been put on the UNO hot seat. Then-Mayor Tom Bradley was so angry at the treatment at one meeting that he stalked out.

UNO on Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of its founding with a convention that brought 6,000 members of the Eastside group itself, and sister organizations from throughout the West, to the Grand Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. As the list of UNO objectives was discussed, the crowd yelled its approval.

Allies were applauded, and enemies were lustily booed.

UNO’s 20th anniversary is a benchmark for an organization that has changed the landscape of grass-roots organizing and politics in Southern California. Using one of the models developed by the late Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky--forming mass membership organizations from the rank and file of local churches--UNO and its sister groups have rewritten the rules on how poor neighborhoods can fight for themselves.

UNO senior leader Lou Negrete said the goal was nothing less than to touch “the deep concerns” of the community.

“There may be times when I disagreed with UNO, but you have to respect it,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who has had more than his share of run-ins with the group. “Any time you can empower people so that they can do things for themselves, you have to give them credit.”

Since its founding, the predominately Latino organization has played a major role in “actions” called to improve neighborhood conditions or affect a constituency beyond East L.A.

Among the victories was the 30% reduction of auto insurance rates on the Eastside; the establishment of Community Youth Gang Services, an anti-gang agency; the Los Angeles Unified School District’s acceptance of the LEARN reform program at the insistence of UNO and other groups; and the construction of 126 units of affordable housing in Bell Gardens with grants, public subsidies, loans and investments sought by UNO and its sister group in South-Central Los Angeles, the South Central Organizing Committee.

UNO was part of a statewide coalition that successfully sought an increase in the state minimum wage in 1987 from $3.35 per hour to $4.25. UNO also fought for Hope in Youth, a controversial program aimed at helping at-risk youths.

According to some, though, UNO’s biggest victory was its own creation.

“I wonder how East L.A. would look if UNO had been around in the 1950s” when five freeways were built through the Eastside, fragmenting neighborhoods and displacing many families, asked Lydia Lopez, who served as one of UNO’s president in the early 1980s. “UNO helped reacquaint neighborhoods with each other.”

The group was modeled after COPS--Communities Organized for Public Service--a church-based organization in San Antonio, Texas. Bishop Juan Arzube, then an auxiliary archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was impressed by what he saw at a COPS meeting he attended in the early 1970s.

“This little old lady, she must have been 70 or 72 years old, wanted to know something from this city councilman,” recalled the now retired Arzube. “ ‘Are you going to vote for this project?’ she wanted to know. I can’t remember what the issue was, but the attitude of this little old lady and others there was so forceful.”

Arzube came home with enthusiasm and the encouragement of Alinsky’s Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation. With then Archbishop Timothy Manning’s blessing and IAF’s help, UNO was started in 1976 with members from 20 Eastside Catholic parishes and churches of other denominations.

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In short order, UNO fought for the installation of 100 traffic signs on various Eastside streets. That was followed by other successes, marked by the group’s persistence and the sometimes-rude ways it treats high-profile bureaucrats and officeholders.

Organizers say UNO’s success is based on a simple formula: There is constant consultation at local churches to decide what actions should be taken. “Problems”--defined by as situations not prone to immediate solutions--can be put off until more resources and study are marshaled. But “issues”--which can be as mundane as getting stop signs at dangerous intersections--can be taken on immediately. Organizing at the grass-roots level, in UNO’s case in local churches, is essential to success.

Other core concepts in the group’s philosophy is: There are no permanent enemies. There are no permanent allies. Anybody can be a leader, especially if that person can get ten people to a meeting.

UNO’s hard edge with the high and mighty comes from this axiom: Don’t expect a politician to be your friend. You just want him or her to respect you.

UNO’s achievements have spawned 12 sister organizations in the West, as far away as Seattle. Three of them were started with UNO’s help in Los Angeles County: the South Central Organizing Committee (SCOC); the East Valleys Organization (EVO), centered in Pomona; and the Valley Organized in Community Effort (VOICE) in the San Fernando Valley.

UNO’s successes, however, have come at a price that some early supporters find troubling.

For example, they say, UNO’s support in East L.A. has dwindled. Where the group once counted 20 supporting churches, it has about five these days.

While UNO has attracted new parishes and churches in adjoining communities, such as St. Matthias Catholic Church in Huntington Park, it rankles some supporters that one-time UNO parishes, like St. Lucy’s in City Terrace, are no longer involved.

“To understand UNO is to understand East L.A., but it seems UNO has gotten away from that,” said Father Pedro Villarroya, an early supporter who signed the group’s application to get nonprofit status in California.

To some, even more troubling is the group’s current approach to developing new leaders. When UNO first started out, Lopez said, its presidents served for about two years, allowing others to rotate into leadership posts. The group’s first three presidents, Gloria Chavez, Diana Tarango and Lopez, were newcomers to grass-roots activism.

But today, UNO has co-chairs instead of presidents and some leaders have been in their posts for about 15 years. One such person is Negrete, a Chicano Studies professor at Cal State Los Angeles, who is considered a senior leader of UNO.

But UNO officials insist that the group has remained true to the aim of developing new leaders, whether they be on the Eastside or elsewhere. They point to current UNO co-chair Francisco Amador, who works at St. Matthias. Born in Baja California, the 39-year-old Amador was never involved in civic affairs until he learned of UNO. He quickly embraced the group and moved up its leadership ladder.

Now a naturalized U.S. citizen, he recently exhorted 130 people at a church meeting to follow his example to citizenship.

“Active citizens!” he shouted in English and Spanish. The audience yelled its approval.

Amador and others like him will be crucial players as UNO and its sister groups kick off their Active Citizenship Campaign, an ambitious plan to register 96,000 new voters in the county and then get them to the polls in November.

UNO officials believe that these new voters will endorse UNO positions on two statewide initiatives--to support the measure increasing the state minimum wage and reject the one that would ban affirmative action in public employment and education.

Sunday’s convention adopted the campaign’s strategy of identifying UNO members in 960 precincts and training them to get 100 new voters to the polls in each precinct.

To whip up enthusiasm, the INS’ Rogers was invited to the convention to give an update on his efforts to reduce the backlog of citizenship applications. These new citizens will be targeted as part of the registration drive.

The convention Sunday approved another campaign for UNO and its sister groups to undertake, but it may be difficult to achieve in part because of their reputation.

UNO and its sister groups want to meet with Paul Hazen, the chairman of Wells Fargo Bank, over its goal--after its acquisition of First Interstate Bank in January--to lend out $45 billion over a 10-year period to spur the economy in the states where the bank does business.

UNO officials want to know whether minority communities will get their fair share. But Wells Fargo officials--well aware of UNO’s confrontational treatment of officials--have not agreed to the meeting. They suspect UNO’s real aim is to get a commitment from Hazen on the loan program.

“Our view is that we only have to explain it to banking regulators,” said bank spokeswoman Kathleen Shilkret

UNO has stepped up its demand for a meeting with Hazen with noisy demonstrations at two Wells Fargo branches in the Southland, but that hasn’t changed the bank’s position.

“This is not the kind of behavior that endears groups to us,” the spokeswoman said.

Told of the spokeswoman’s comments, more than one UNO delegate growled defiance at Sunday’s convention. “We’ll see about that,” one UNO veteran said. “I ain’t banking there any more.”