Getting Real With a Community Organizer

By Samantha Page, September 17, 2008

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In Downtown Los Angeles's Skid Row, General Jeff proves that community activists can make a powerful difference.

On a corner deep in the heart of Skid Row during a hot, sunny afternoon, there are a couple dozen people milling around the entrance to the Midnight Mission, one of the homeless shelters and recovery facilities in the neighborhood. One man is selling cigarettes. Another man, in a dingy white Panama hat and white loafers sits in a lawn chair, listening to his boom box. Just down the street sits the Central Division Police Station. It looks like a fortress.

Beyond law enforcement, this is not a neighborhood that gets a lot of attention. The man I am meeting, who asked to be identified as General Jeff, is a community organizer, a job that was recently vilified and mocked by Gov. Sarah Palin and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani [recently] at the Republican National Convention. Jeff is a c.o. for what is perhaps the least organized community in the country. And it's quite large. According to the 2000 Census, there are approximately 17,000 residents in Central City East. (For the record, that is approximately three times as big as Wasilla when Palin was elected). There are 3.7 million people in the City of Los Angeles -- and only one mayor.

On this afternoon, Jeff is late. He has been passing out fliers for the new DASH (Downtown Area Short Hop) route starting in Central City East (Skid Row's official name). It's Jeff's responsibility to "give out all this information to [his] constituents". He talks about their short attention spans, how some of them can't read, how he would go through the flier "line by line" if someone needs it.

Palin and Giuliani's mockery indicated that they didn't think a community organizer had any real worth or power: the race for the presidency is a race for the most constituents, and maybe the Republicans don't believe community organizers have any. Or perhaps the Republicans and Palin think community organizers don't do anything. According to Palin, being "a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."

Well, it certainly looks like Jeff has responsibilities, but what exactly is a community organizer, who are his constituents and what does he do for them?

General Jeff is the first to admit that it's hard to stick a definition on the title of "Community Organizer." He thinks that's why it's so easy to laugh at the idea — "even if you could stick a definition on it, that would be limiting," he says.

"There isn't enough paper in the world to list everything I do."

In the past year, General Jeff has taken part in starting a basketball league, a street-cleaning program, and a program to put murals on some of the grey, depressing walls that line Skid Row's streets. This doesn't include any number of other, quotidian measures he has accomplished -- like handing out the DASH public information fliers)to better the lives of Skid Row's residents.

To him, a community organizer is someone who is "active in the community, doing good things, fighting the good fight, if you will."

That's fairly vague, but he's also at City Hall everyday. Every week, he reviews the Council's agenda, highlighting any item dealing with Skid Row. He attends those hearings, filling out a speaker's card and testifying on behalf of residents. Jeff says that there are three shifts on Skid Row: the day shift, the night shift, and the graveyard shift, and he hits the streets during all three, checking in with the residents and passing along information.

That morning, he had also met with a representative from one of the developers who is converting lofts along Main Street to discuss some of the issues related to the new development. "I go heavy on the emails," he laughs. Jeff is also on the board of directors for the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council, a city-chartered organization whose mission is: "To unite the diverse communities of Downtown Los Angeles and to provide an innovative forum for all community stakeholders to contribute to a healthy, vibrant, and inclusive Downtown." Bridging the gap between community residents and the civic authorities is one of Jeff's main goals.

But the real question, he says, is: "How do we re-instill hope into the community?" Despite the catchword, Jeff hasn't been coached by the Obama team. Later, when he talks about the importance of looking to the future, which is one theme he returns to again and again, he says, "Obama was saying that if he got in office, in sixteen months, troops will come home.... Well, a lot of those guys are going to end up on Skid Row." Everything for him is about who needs to be taken care of, how it can be done with extremely limited resources, and how he can "plant the seeds" for a healthier community.

"We've seen a lot of results with zero funding," he says. Benefits, he says, have been multi-faceted: a local sponsor of the basketball league has seen his business improve, which Jeff credits to closer ties to the community. Jeff believes that there needs to be someone working at ground level, analyzing and prioritizing the needs of the community. "A lot of these people behind desks don't have any solutions," he says. "The decision-makers... haven't done the legwork. They don't know how to prioritize [Skid Row's problems]."

Skid Row needs someone like him -- someone on the ground, around the clock, who can speak up on its behalf, and can encourage the people there to help themselves. He talks about street-cleaning, about how dirty it was. When they first started sweeping the streets, it was just him and a couple other people, everyday, cleaning up other people's trash.

At first, people laughed at them and said that Skid Row was a lost cause. "We're going to make a difference," Jeff would say. "You'll see."

You already can.

Samantha Page is a frequent contributor to Pop+Politics.