Redlining is a discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities. Redlining has been most prominent in the United States, and has mostly been directed against African-Americans. The most common examples involve denial of credit and insurance, denial of healthcare, and the development of food deserts in minority neighborhoods.
Saul David Alinsky was an American community activist and political theorist. His work through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation helping poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords, politicians, bankers and business leaders won him national recognition and notoriety. Responding to the impatience of a New Left generation of activists in the 1960s, Alinsky – in his widely cited Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer (1971) – defended the arts both of confrontation and of compromise involved in community organizing as keys to the struggle for social justice.
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or continent movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to implement change at the local, regional, national, or international levels. Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision-making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures.
Thomas A. Gaudette (1923–1998) was a community organizer who worked in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. Originally a businessman, Gaudette became interested in neighborhood organizing through his Catholic Church activism. Gaudette helped form a neighborhood group, along the lines of those organized by Saul Alinsky, on the far West Side of Chicago called Organization for a Better Austin. OBA was concerned with poor schools and neighborhood decline.
Gale Cincotta, a community activist from the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, led the national fight for the US federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) of 1975 and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. The CRA requires banks and savings and loans to offer credit throughout their entire market areas and prohibits them from targeting only wealthier neighborhoods with their lending and services, a practice known as redlining. She was a co-founder with Shel Trapp of the National People's Action in Chicago, a coalition of some 300 community organizations throughout the United States, and served as its executive director and chairperson from 1973 until her death in 2001.
The Community Reinvestment Act is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to help meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Congress passed the Act in 1977 to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining.
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other or share some common problem come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.
Peacemakers was an American pacifist organization founded following a conference on "More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity" in Chicago in July 1948. Ernest and Marion Bromley and Juanita and Wally Nelson largely organized the group. The group’s organizational structure adopted a multidivisional organizational structure with a loose hierarchy, prioritizing local committees including but not limited to the Tax Refusal and Military Draft Refusal Committee.
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) is a non-profit organization founded in 1968 to advance consumer interests through research, education and advocacy.
The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, also known as The American TFP, and legally incorporated as The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc. is a Traditionalist Catholic American advocacy group. It is an autonomous organization which forms part of the larger social conservative, anticommunist and monarchist international Tradition, Family, Property (TFP) movement founded by Brazilian intellectual, politician, and activist Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.
The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) is a national community organizing network established in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard James Sheil and businessman and founder of the Chicago Sun-Times Marshall Field III. The IAF partners with religious congregations and civic organizations at the local level to help them build organizations of organizations, referred to as broad-based organizations by the Industrial Areas Foundation, with the purpose of strengthening citizen leadership, developing trust across a community's dividing lines and taking action on issues identified by local community leaders.
Community Change, formerly the Center for Community Change (CCC), is a progressive community organizing group active in the United States. It was founded in 1968 in response to civil rights concerns of the 1960s and to honor Robert F. Kennedy. The organization's stated mission is "to build the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to change their communities and public policies for the better."
Concerns about human rights in Chile include discrimination against indigenous populations; societal violence and discrimination against women, children, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people; child labor; and harsh prison conditions and treatment. Additional human rights concerns in the country include use of excessive force and abuse by security forces, isolated reports of government corruption, and anti-Semitism. Authorities generally maintain effective control over the security forces. However, security forces occasionally commit human rights abuses. The government generally takes steps to prosecute officials who commit abuses. Nevertheless, many human rights organizations contend that security officials accused of committing abuses have impunity.
Faith in Action, formerly known as Pacific Institute for Community Organization, is a national network of faith-based community organizations in the United States. The organization is headquartered in Oakland, California, with additional offices in San Diego and Washington, D.C. The organization believes in a society free of economic oppression, racism and discrimination. Its stated mission is "to increase access to health care, improve public schools, make neighborhoods safer, build affordable housing, redevelop communities and revitalize democracy."
Shel Trapp was a community organizer based in Chicago, co-founder of National People's Action, and author of several books and pamphlets on community organizing. Trapp and Cincotta are widely credited with writing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Trapp has also been responsible for training hundreds of community organizers throughout the United States through the National Training and Information Center. He retired in 2000 and died of pneumonia in October 2010.
Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA) is a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that mobilizes the Jewish community of the region to advance racial and economic justice. JCUA partners with diverse community groups across the city and state to combat racism, antisemitism, poverty and other forms of systemic oppression, through grassroots community organizing, youth education programs, and community development.
The Northern Student Movement (NSM) was an American civil rights organization that drew inspiration from sit-ins and lunch counter protests led by students in the south. NSM was founded at Yale University in 1961 by Peter J. Countryman, which grew out of the work of a committee formed by the New England Student Christian Movement, and was affiliated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Countryman began NSM's work by collecting books for a predominantly African-American college and raising funds for SNCC. He then turned to organizing tutoring programs for inner city youth in northeastern cities. By 1963, NSM was reported to be helping as many as 3,500 children using 2,200 student volunteers from 50 colleges and universities. NSM also encouraged direct-action protests, sending volunteers to sit-ins in the South and organizing rent strikes in the North. In the early 60's, NSM's work was divided into three areas which were each headed by an executive committee: "the campus, the community, and the south."
The Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, doing business as NeighborWorks America, is a congressionally chartered nonprofit organization that supports community development in the United States and Puerto Rico. The organization provides grants and technical assistance to more than 240 community development organizations. NeighborWorks America provides training for housing and community development professionals through its national training institutes. Since 2007, NeighborWorks America has administered the Congressionally created National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling Program.
The Union Miles Development Corporation is a nonprofit community development corporation serving the Union-Miles Park statistical planning area in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Created in 1981 by the Union Miles Community Coalition, it was successful in drawing national attention to discriminatory practices in lending practices and won passage of an Ohio law reforming housing foreclosure procedures.
George Goehl is an American community organizer, activist and former executive director of People's Action, an organization formed through the merger of five national organizations into one of the largest, with more than a million volunteers and 600 paid organizers, working for poor and working-class people in the United States. His efforts have helped to craft city, state, and federal campaigns on issues that range from outlawing predatory lending, advancing immigration reform, multiracial organizing in rural communities and defining co-governing. He also sits on the board of The Solutions Project and Equal Voice Action.
