A Day in the Life

POWER meeting leaders: (l to r) Bill Przkucki, Jaime Zeledón, Maria Sanchez, Edgar Satisteban, Marco Galindo.

Byline: Jacky Guerrero

It is 4 a.m. and Jaime Zeledón has just started his day. As he is dressing, 90.7 KPFK is playing in the background and he ruminates on the day: the bus to work, the elderly client he will take care of and—in between all of that—the texts, emails and phone calls he will make to his fellow leaders at People Organized for Westside Renewal (POWER).

Since 1991, Jaime has been a leader at POWER, a Liberty Hill grantee organization that works in low income areas of West L.A. on affordable housing, education, social safety-net and other issues, but his roots in the social justice  movement began three decades ago in Nicaragua.  As an organizer, he is, as some like to say, “a lifer.”  He learned community organizing in the late 1970s during the Sandinista Revolution.  “The revolution was the best education I could have received because it developed my spirit and love for community,” he says.

Jaime’s recent accomplishments through POWER include leading the Mar Vista Campaign in the Mar Vista Gardens Housing Project in Culver City, his home. That campaign improved pedestrian safety by getting a traffic signal installed at a dangerous intersection where children had been killed. “I couldn’t be happy sitting silently as these things are happening,” explains Jaime about what prompted him to get involved.

Early on in his life, Jaime began to place the needs of the community over his own. It’s a sensibility he feels is needed to make the world a better place. As a result, he has spent his life working with his neighbors to improve their quality of life. Currently he is involved in the Trash Campaign through which POWER members in coalition with other tenant groups are working to lower the cost of the trash service in the housing projects.

Events in the late 1970’s in Nicaragua catalyzed Jaime to become an organizer. He was then an elementary school teacher, and he lost one of his students, 10-year-old Luis Alfonso Velasquez, who was murdered by the Somoza dictatorship after being seen at a demonstration. Jaime could no longer stand on the sidelines and so he joined the student activists in the Sandinista Revolution.

Jaime remembers how under the dictatorship schools had few resources and illiteracy was widespread, particularly in rural areas. He noticed how illiteracy was tied to ignorance and resulted in political corruption.

“An unorganized community is easy to dominate and take over,” he says, pointing out a connection between those times and the present.

As an organizer, Jaime became one of the thousands of Nicaraguan teachers who, after the revolution, joined the Sandinista Literacy Campaign, successfully reducing illiteracy from 50% to 13% within five months according to a 2005 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report. The campaign was so successful that in 1980 Nicaragua was awarded the UNSECO Literacy Award. This experience proved to Jaime that organizing among the most disadvantaged populations could bring about significant change.

In 1985, he emigrated to the United States. By 1991 he was living in the Jordan Downs Public Housing Development in Watts during a time when tensions between the Latino and African American communities were high over access to housing and jobs. These tensions reached a climax in 1991, after an arson fire resulted in the deaths of a family of five. Because Jaime sees the need to organize wherever he goes, he joined a task force that aimed to bring the residents together in peace and improve race relations in the community.

When asked what he’s sacrificed to be a devoted community activist he says spending more time with his wife and four children. However he hopes that his life will serve as a good example to his kids about taking responsibility for one’s community. At 62, Jaime never stops. He says that his work gives him energy and motivates him to keep going.

The photo slideshow above was created by Liberty Hill photographer Warren Hill. Subtitles and sound production by Sara Harris. 

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Liberty Hill’s Dinner—The Power of People

Byline: Rebecca Rona-Tuttle

Tonight’s Upton Sinclair Dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel was a vivid reminder that at its core Liberty Hill is about people power.  Watch the video "Change. Made Possible by You. Powered by Liberty Hill."

Kafi D. Blumenfield, CEO and President, spoke eloquently, telling the dinner audience: “It’s time for us to really broaden our networks to include potential allies we may not have worked with before. We are in a new era that requires us to build power as only community organizing can do. Our time calls for organizing efforts that are not only smarter and sharper. But bigger and more ambitious.

“We must invest in people,” Kafi said, “training new leaders for new times, reaching out to new supporters and engaging new allies as never before.”

She gave the crowd welcome news that was met with applause: “Despite the economic downturn, we expect to maintain our grantmaking, investing $3 million at a time when L.A. organizers are bleeding for lack of financial support.”

Kafi spoke enthusiastically of the Wally Marks Leadership Institute for Change, launched a few months ago. “Eighty-five new leaders—and I wish you could meet them all. They’re so amazing!—these leaders are participating in intensive on-the-job training on nearly every important social justice issue facing Los Angeles.”

The evening was rich in honorees, with their insightful—at times downright funny—remarks. For me, and I’m biased, the most moving honorees were the men and women we’ve “anointed” as Liberty Hill's Grassroots Leaders To Watch in 2010—Hamid Khan of South Asian Network, Rev. Eric Lee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Amy Schur, formerly of California ACORN, now of ACCE; Sentayehu Silassie of Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance, Chris Gabriele of POWER and Maria Brenes of InnerCity Struggle. (View Maria’s video.)

Maria—the magnificently pregnant executive director of InnerCity Struggle–accepted the Wally Marks Changemaker Award on behalf of ICS, which was honored tonight for its successes in organizing young people, their families, and local community members around improving Eastside Los Angeles schools. She referred to Liberty Hill’s decade-long support and expressed her gratitude: “Thank you to Liberty Hill for investing in our vision, our commitment and energy—which has resulted in concrete changes for thousands in our community.”

Click here for immediate responses to the event from honorees, presenters, 2010 Grassroots Leaders, and others recorded by Liberty Hill's Vincent Jones during the dessert reception after the dinner. 

Late in the evening, Kafi reported to crowd of Liberty Hill friends that $350,000 had already been raised, and the counting wasn’t over. Precious dollars that Liberty Hill will invest in people power in Los Angeles.

And the star of the show? The acclaimed novelist Walter Mosley. As he drove an icepick into the heart of charity, I agonized over his words, wondering what he’d say next. Our honoree dissing Liberty Hill?  Check back. We're working with his people to post the text of his remarks next Monday and the video of his presentation later in the week.

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Affordable Housing Activists in Overdrive

Byline: Rebecca Rona-Tuttle

Update – May 7: Affordable housing champions Liberty Hill supports, such as POWER, LA Voice and ACCE, many concerned citizens and others–such as me personally–were eagerly looking forward to today's City Council vote on the proposed rent hike moratorium. (See two previous posts.)  In fact "eagerly" puts it too mildly, since many believed with all their being that landlords increasing rent, when tenants with low incomes are already struggling desperately, would be highly detrimental. (I do feel for certain landlords who are having a difficult time earning a profit, but I believe that low-income tenants are struggling much more.)

As it turned out–thank goodness–the proposed moratorium passed on a procedural vote today, with the Los Angeles City Council agreeing on an 8-6 vote to consider an ordinance that would freeze rents through October 31.

However, after some last-minute changes, the ordinance to be voted on will only apply to buildings with six or more units, rather than applying to all of the city's rent-controlled apartments. Read more about this in the Los Angeles Times,

There are widely divergent views among councilmembers. For one, Councilman Richard Alarcon will attempt to roll back some of the changes when the moratorium comes to a vote in two weeks.

Read on to learn one organizer's experience yesterday, prior to the vote; background on the ordinance, and information on how you can make your voice heard. This struggle is not over, and you can play an important role…

Tomorrow morning's City Council vote on the proposed moratorium on rent increases in Los Angeles is getting lots of people all stirred up. (See the previous blog post below.)

I just heard from a very excited Bill Przylucki of People Organized for Westside Renewal (POWER), who's working hard, organizing people around the hoped-for moratorium. And this is what he wrote:

"The momentum is building big-time.  We've generated over 300 calls to Rosendahl's office in 24 hours!  (Plus hundreds more over the past few weeks).  We're on track to have 300 people at City Hall tomorrow to fill the chambers and do public comment for as long as necessary ("the people's filibuster"). This is definitely a showdown between greed and democracy…Nary an organizer will sleep well tonight in LA, but we're all very hopeful.  The signs are good…"

Let's keep our fingers crossed. Read the LA Times article here.

What do you think of the proposed moratorium? Are you contacting a city councilmember or heading to City Hall in the morning? We'd love to read your comments. Just click the comments button below.

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HUD Chief To Be Confronted by Families Losing Their Homes. POWER calls for a moratorium.

Over 500 people, mostly residents of public housing, will hold a town-hall style meeting at Mar Vista Gardens public housing project tomorrow night with Bessy Kong, the deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  They will confront her with the human cost of the loss of public housing throughout the U.S.

Over 195,000 units of public housing were destroyed last year, and 230,000 more are scheduled for demolition this year. At the current rate, every public housing project in the nation will be gone within 5 years. POWER, a Liberty Hill partner, is calling for a moratorium on the demolition of public housing nationwide.  Download POWER media advisory oct 2009