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The Liveable NYC Initiative (LNI)
I have been holding monthly organizing meetings designed to bring together organizers from grassroots groups for strategy discussions and networking. Several good intitatives have come out of these meetings and some excellent connections have been made among groups. One initiative that is growing out of these meetings is the idea of trying to bridge the divide between labor, which tends to be overly pro-development, with neighborhood groups that tend to be anti-development. My take on this is that these are two traditionally Democratic groups that the Republicans have successfully driven a wedge between. If progressives can reunite the labor and local neighborhood/environmental groups, we might be unbeatable.
Labor wants jobs. Hence they tend to assume all development is good because it means jobs. Often this is wrong in the long term since the jobs brought in by a Ratner style project often are either low paying or non-union. Environmental groups tend to dislike all development, ignoring the fact that development within an urban environment is often necessary and can improve open space and infrastructure to the benefit of the local environment. Finally, neighborhood groups often are suspicious of any change and want their neighborhoods to stay identical to what it has always been.
Groups like (for example) Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, helped by City Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP) is taking a more balanced approach--a reasonable development plan that may even bring in better jobs than the Ratner plan, focuses on local infrastructure and open space, but allows some new development. A coalition of neighborhood groups from around the city is forming to stop the Bloomberg/Ratner vision of Development. I think, in general, they have excellent ideas and a coallition is absolutely necessary. United our neighborhoods can stand, divided they will be picked off one by one by Bloomberg's developer friends.
But a coalition of neighborhood groups is not enough. We need to bring labor on board. Labor should be our natural allies, especially since they often live in the same neighborhoods. Small business groups also should be on board since giant development plans favor stores like Wal-Mart and not local businesses.
We need to bring all of these groups together to initiate a dialogue on how to create a more "Liveable NYC" (to borrow a friend's excellent term). Since we all need jobs AND liveable neighborhoods with open space, good schools and adequate infrastructure, there is no reason why labor, small business groups and neighborhood groups can't come together and create a vision for the city to rival the unpleasant Bloomberg/Ratner vision that destroys neighborhoods, destroys small businesses and brings in mostly low paying, non-union jobs.
The group I bring together is trying to bring together a quarum of interested people for a meeting discussing the idea of a "Liveable NYC". We are hoping to bring together our first "Liveable NYC" meeting in July. We are talking with a handful of neighborhood groups, a handful of progressive political leaders and, we hope, some labor reps trying to bring together a diverse and rational group to discuss our goals. The date and time are as yet tentative, depending on who wants to come and when they can make it.
I want to throw out an invitation to any neighborhood organizers, union members/organizers, and interested progressives. If anyone out there wants to join in, please email me (or respond to this diary and let me know how to contact you) to express your interests. Once we have a better idea when we can meet I can let you know.
This idea, if successful in NYC, might be very important for the success of progressives and the Democratic Party across the nation. Join us if you are interested.
mole, this is fantastic news
I hope i'm not sounding like AHnuld.
something that has been on my mind for a while is this issue of building discursive bridges. Meaning, of using TDG as a place for progressive New Yorkers to meet and enter in not just communication through announcements, blog posts and such, but conversation and action. The idea of bringing together unions and community development activists is brilliant.
On a similar note, I'd like local bloggers to have more connections with the different research institutes and think tanks that are in the city. I think their jobs and our blogging passions are aligned and could find synergy.
How much impact has the internet had in this "odd-coupling"? Have you guys used listserves or forums to bring people into a conversation about development in Brooklyn? Or has all of this been done face2face?
Word of mouth
We have a group of groups that send people to our meetings. Some groups show up once, exchange cards, get on our email list and don't continue to come. They mainly are interested in the initial networking. Other groups come for specific issues and yet other groups show all the time. So it is a rotating group of organizers who gets together. Discussions sometimes ramble, sometimes are very focused.
We have had one neighborhood group come by and discuss things. But the actual Liveable NYC Initiative has so far been an idea kicked around among about half a dozen of us. We are now trying to pull in whatever connections we each have. Some people have labor connections..we hope they can pull in those connections. Some have neighborhood group connections. We hope they can pull in those folks. Some of us are friends with progressive politicians. We will get them interested. We can only hope that a good quarum comes together for our first meeting in July.
I want to give full credit to the people at New Democratic Majority. Without them this would have remained only a vague idea. They have really helped shape it and hopefully will be part of it as a group. So far it has been individuals from that group that have been shaping the idea, so I don't know if they are on board as a group. But those individuals have done most of the practical work.
Again, anyone with connections to labor or neighborhood groups could really be helpful with this!
how
How does one get on the email list or learn more about upcoming meetings, initiatives etc?
-AB
http://onNYTurf.com
Answer
I sent you an answer by private mail, but for anyone who is interested in my newsletter, my monthly meetup for progressive organizers, or the Liveable NYC Initiative, all you need to do is email me telling me which you are interested in and let me know your email address so I can add you to the appropriate list.
Thanks for your interest!
I wish I could remember the n
I wish I could remember the name of the guy who came to talk in one of my classes. He was with a group, you probably know the group, that he defined as all about bridging the gap between Labor and Environmental groups.
He said he worked with or was close to "giff" miller. (I hope you are not this guy because to be quite honest I didn't like him at all. He seemed very preppy and disconnected from the hands on nitty gritty). Anyway, I asked a question which got him ( and the teacher who hated my questions), a little pissed. This was in early-spring, and there had been an article that week, with photographs of the unions cheering the stadium proposal. This was also not long after the Rego Park Wal-Mart was defeated by other, different unions mobilizing - probably in dissonance to those unions favoring the stadium.
So I asked the guy - how do you work on that front - when you have the Labor movement divided against itself, on various development issues. The teacher looked quite uneasy. The guy said, "I don't go there. I stay away from that stuff."
It seems to me that "that stuff", is one of the key places where Labor (which is just about to sub-divide now anyway), could use some help in building "contact zones", or connections of understanding within its own organization.
Another Labor teacher I had (a far better teacher), did successfully bridge the gap. He succeeded in managing a gut rehab in midtown that comprised both mandatory "green" protocols, with mandatory union janitorial jobs, yet the development still went forward. So two union factions were satisfied.
Thanks for your post.
Wal-Mart
I am surprised there are too many unions that are pro Wal Mart. Even if some union jobs are involved in building the place, Wal-Mart as a company is so anti-union you'd think no union would have anything to do with them.
I am not the unpleasant guy you pissed off. In fact I think the last way anyone would describe me is "preppy." : -)
If you can interest any of your teachers in our project, that would be great, too. Or if YOU are interested. Seems like you might be a good connection. If this meeting (probably July 16th) comes off it will be a pretty good thing to be a part of, I think.
community lead development & online networking
actually we did huge amounts of work online about the williamsburg rezoning. I am surprized no one has brought that up yet. We started a defend brooklyn email list and the websites were excellent too
check out
www.communityplan.org
and the original coalition's website, the www.northbrooklynalliance.org
we didn't do as much in the blogosphere because there wasn't much targetting local nyc politics till the gotham appeared. certainly getting our actions and events listed online far and wide helped drive turn out. Even more importantly it changed people's perception of situation from being seen as a neighborhood issue to being recognized as a citywide issue. what is happening in Wburg is happening everywhere in the city. We are currently working to unite communities facing short-sighted development plans around the city. It is the Communities United initiative. There isn't a website there yet but we'd like someone to help with that.
It would link the Columbia university eniment domain atrocity to the Williamsburg plans, Westside development and so on.
BTC doesn't support walmart that I know of
Just because there are some disagreements inside labor doesn't mean that the building trades council supports building walmarts as a poster above infers.
The vast majority of unions, all except the municipal workers unions (more or less) supported the westside stadium.
And I am not aware of any unions supporting building walmarts anywhere. It is not like you can say there are conservative unions and progressive unions-- the politics just aren't that simple.
I am concerned that there are a lot of people who don't know much about union politics and the current agendas of the labor movement. I suggest folks check out the good ole http://www.unitetowin.org/
site, its daughter, the http://www.changetowin.org/
site and the afl-cio's website too.
http://www.ibew.org/stories/0
http://www.ibew.org/stories/03journal/0304/page9.htm
This article from the IBEW's newsletter describes a little bit of the sentiment I was trying to get at ( although perhaps I spoke of it rather clumsily). The article seems to imply that if Wal-Mart sought union labor ( and it would have to in New York, if it were to build here), then union labor would build a Wal-Mart. Costco may be a better example, given its more conscious leadership, of how to treat workers well, but Target and Home Depot are certainly not at the head of the class. See for example, these posts (I still don't understand how to simplify links at this blog..): http://www.joehilldispatch.org/laborwire/archives/004286.php
http://www.targetunion.org/node/8043
The initial citation appears to indicate that Labor would build at Wal-Mart, and certainly other big boxers ( who, despite the focus on Wal-Mart, are happy to follow its example (though again, as I said, Costco is a well-documented exception), given the opportunity. That's where the common cause needs work, I believe.