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THANKS TO OUR 2007 GRANTEES
The 2007 DMF Grantees did some amazing work!
Last year we awarded a total of $38,900 to 14 different projects. The Grants specified that all work had to be completed by July 1, 2008. At our annual Board Retreat in October, we collectively reviewed all of the projects based on reports submitted by the Grantees and site visits. We then determined the strengths (and occasionally, weaknesses) of each of the Grants. We have found this to be a very helpful prelude to making decisions about new projects.
We typically share our conclusions with only the Grantees but this year we wanted to post this on our website for several reasons.
First, we want to publicly acknowledge the terrific work that our grantees did. Second, there are lessons learned from each of these grants that we believe will be helpful to others. Finally, if you applied for funding and it was not possible for us to fund your project, we believe that reviewing our analysis of grants we made will give you a better idea of the types of projects we do fund. We encourage all applicants to keep trying even if they were denied this time around.
We have included website info for our grantees (if available) so that you can find out more about them.
Many of these projects overlap and fall into more than one “category” but we have tried to group them together so that you can understand our funding priorities.
ANTI-WAR AND EDUCATIONAL WORK
Arlington West Film and Speakers Program ($5,000)—Sally Marr and Peter Dudar produced a film which provides inner-city at risk youth typically targeted by military recruiters with the crucial information they need to make an educated decision about military enlistment. During the first 6 months of 2008 they visited 56 schools, showed the film to over 23,000 students, and distributed 7,500 Arlington West DVD’s. They make these presentations accompanied by Gold Star Families, and Iraqi veterans. Their website (www.arlingtonwestfilm.com) gives a great description of the project, comments from students (about 90% of whom change their decision from joining the military to not signing up), and information about how you can get this presentation shown at your school or your community organization.
We believe Arlington West is one of the best grants we have ever made. We think it is successful because of the tremendous passion that Peter and Sally have in literally saving the lives of young people and showing them that there are alternatives to military service.
Many of the same comments apply to CAMS (Coalition against Militarism in our Schools) ($2,500). CAMS is a grassroots coalition that mobilizes students, parents, and teachers to proactively address the expanding role of the military in our schools. We specifically funded an educational campaign that informs parents and students of their right to prevent their school from releasing their contact information to military recruiters. They particularly are represented in East and Central Los Angeles, the South Bay and Valley area schools.
www.militaryfreeschools.org describes the other terrific programs that CAMS has like the “Adopt a School Project”.
Again, our Board was very impressed by the passion of Arlene Inouye and the network of parents, teachers, and students that CAMS has developed.
Like CAMS, CEJ (Coalition for Educational Justice) ($2,500) organizes teachers, parents, and students. CEJ works in LAUSD schools and with the UTLA on broad campaigns to abolish standardized testing, lower class size, expand parents/students/teachers power, and fight for local autonomy and dual language programs.
We think so much of this group that we have funded them on 8 separate occasions!
Our Board believes that the strengths of CEJ are not only the progressive nature of their demands but the fact that they are excellent at developing leaders at every level, being a positive voice in partnership with L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa, and promoting a comprehensive understanding of public education in L.A. In the last 8 years we have seen CEJ grow from an organization with a budget of $10,000 a year to over $75,000 currently. It is astonishing how much they get done with this modest budget.
The Collective Bargaining Education Project ($1,000) is yet another organization working with high school students. This is a project of the UTLA/LAUSD. Linda Tubach worked for years to bring labor relations education to high school students through a curriculum (“Workplace Issues and Collective Bargaining in the Classroom”) that allows students to role play and engage in actual labor contract bargaining.
Our grant was to allow Tubach to create a Collective Bargaining Institute for Pomona/Ontario area high schools. It was not possible to complete the project during the 2007 Grant cycle but Tubach is committed to continuing the effort. Through collaboration with DMF Board Member Tim Sandoval, it is hoped that the program will be scheduled with the Academy of Young Scholars in Pomona.
HOUSING
The DMF is committed to funding projects that address the root causes of economic inequality and not simply deal with symptoms. Nowhere is this more evident than with the two truly outstanding organizations that we funded in 2007 that are fighting in the area of housing rights. They are truly pushing back against capital and fighting gentrification in Downtown and East Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Community Action Network ($5,000) organizes Downtown LA residents focusing on fair and equitable redevelopment, housing policy, increasing affordable housing, and speaking out against violations of basic civil rights. Their organization’s goals are so broad that they only can be understood by visiting their website at www.cangress.org.
The specific project we funded was to train low income community residents in the creation of political art that would support their civil rights campaigns.
This project had very specific designated outcomes which LA CAN not only met but surpassed! They were able to leverage our modest grant by partnering with DreamWorks who had just produced the movie “The Soloist”—the story of a homeless violinist virtuoso befriended by LA Times Journalist Steve Lopez. DreamWorks wanted to give something back to the Downtown LA homeless community and worked with LA CAN to bring folks together to tell their stories through photos, video, and the spoken word.
Our Board applauds LA CAN for using art to teach people to tell their own stories and to resist gentrification.
Union de Vecinos ($2,000) (www.uniondevecinos.net) has spent 10 years fighting to preserve public housing in East Los Angeles. They are the only organization we funded in the area led by immigrants. What impressed our Board the most was that this organization started with a very developed policy on land use (like a moratorium on evictions and demolition, inclusionary zoning, etc.) and from this “big picture” organized a base.
Like LA CAN they set very specific goals and exceeded all of them. In a 3 month period they recruited over 100 new members. They trained 77 of their leaders to volunteer to do grassroots organizing and to recruit to the tenant union. These volunteers knocked on 4,400 doors and spoke with 1,398 tenants!!!
The reason we say that Union de Vecinos is “pushing back against capital” and not merely providing services is that the whole point of their tenant union is to start by addressing the question of basic city services but also to keep everyone’s eyes on the real prize—the right of low income workers to have safe, affordable housing!
IMMIGRATION AND YOUTH
The next three projects offer really different ways of addressing similar issues.
We funded SURGE (Students United to Reach Goals in Education) ($2,900)(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CSULA_SURGE) to produce a video about the struggle of immigrant students to survive in the Cal State University system.
The purpose of the video was to motivate undocumented students to attend a Cal State campus and to form student organizations to fight for their rights.
SURGE did an outstanding job in producing the video. Part of the grant was to disseminate the video as widely as possible. SURGE started this effort with a presentation at the Los Angeles Theater Center to over 200 students, staff, and parents from Cal State LA, Cal State Dominguez Hills, and area high schools. This project is not yet completed. SURGE is organizing showings at other colleges and high schools. Contact them if you want to arrange a showing.
We also awarded $2,500 to Tia Chucha’s Central Cultural (www.tiachucha.com) for their Young Warrior project. Louis and Trini Rodriguez organized a terrific program for young people in the San Fernando/Sylmar area to use art to find expression, creativity, and imagination as they get organized, raise issues, and collaborate with other organizations.
Latinos en Accion de CCI ($2,500) (www.iowacci.org) organizes meat packers in Marshaltown, Iowa. Several of our board members participated in the struggle of the Hormel workers almost 20 years ago. We watched as the meat packing industry went from a unionized workforce to nonunion jobs with terrible health and safety issues.
Latinos en Accion is a Latino led organization that started in 2003 to focus on not only workplace issues like health and safety but also immigration reform, racial profiling, and other issues of critical importance to immigrant workers.
We funded a training called “Democracy Schools” that sought to empower immigrants to take leadership roles on all the issues set forth above. The DMF believes that the rights of immigrant workers is a critical political issue affecting all Americans. Latinos en Accion is doing an outstanding job under truly difficult conditions.
LABOR EDUCATION
One of the founding principles of the DMF was that “nothing can be accomplished without organization”. We believe that the basic organization that fights for the rights of the working class is the trade union. However, as union membership has declined, other forms of organizations have developed like worker centers. There is a whole generation that knows nothing about unions because they are not learning it from their parents and they certainly are not learning it in the schools. The DMF therefore seeks to fund organizations that will remedy this lack of information.
Foremost, among these is the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research. We awarded them a grant in the amount of $2,500 to partner with the Delores Huerta Labor Institute (based at L.A. Trade Tech to develop ways to make the library’s vast and unique labor collection accessible to the over 100,000 faculty and students in the LA Community College District. The library was able to create a centralized physical space for the Luisa Moreno Labor Studies collection and also develop key relationships with high schools, community colleges, Cal State and UCLA schools. The library conducted outreach and provided digital and print tools to educators and students that resulted in an increased use of the library’s labor resources. Find out more about this Los Angeles gem by going to www.socallib.org.
The California Federation of Teachers has a Labor in the Schools Committee. The DMF has considerable experience with labor studies curriculum development. What we found is that there is a plethora or great material designed to teach labor studies. The problem is actually getting this material in the hands of teachers who will utilize it.
Bill Morgan (a Bay Area teacher and member of the Labor in the Schools committee) was awarded a grant in the amount of $2,500 to present a workshop (teaching social justice) to train teachers in using and purchasing available resources.
Our Board concluded that we will review proposals like this to determine how many teachers are actually going to participate in the training and request that the specified outcome includes the courses that are actually going to be taught.
If you are still reading this long article, it should be clear that the DMF strongly emphasizes specific goals and objectives. For the 2007 funding cycle we received about 25 proposals requesting funding for “Cadre training”. We rejected 24 of them. SOUL (The School of Unity and Liberation) ($3,000) submitted a proposal request that was a terrific combination of theory and practice. (www.schoolofunityandliberation.org)
SOUL conducts a 10 week long organizer training program. What makes their program unique is that it is not only book learning but it also places youth with grassroots community organizations for specific internship programs. SOUL works to build the capacity of such organizations with a model of political education and organizing work where youth people work from a base of a clear political analysis and vision. SOUL also does follow up on what happens with the summer interns when the program is completed. A great program!
LABOR ORGANIZING
The South has long been critical to labor unity. Many of us supported the Charleston 5—Longshore Workers in South Carolina that were jailed for their struggles to get a just contract. The Longshore Workers Coalition ($2,500)(www.LWCjustice.com) is an organization of East Coast longshore workers and retirees dedicated to building a stronger and more democratic ILA (International Longshoreman’s Association). We funded them to print and distribute an amazing map (‘The Cargo Chain”) that graphically demonstrates the roles of intermodalism in modern cargo handling.
This map has proved to be a useful organizing tools to train workers on how to organize and achieve power in the logistics industry.
Our final grant was to the Philadelphia Jobs with Justice organization for the project POWR (Philadelphia Officers and Workers Rising)($2,500). This campaign organized Allied—Barton(private security) employees and allies to take direct action with the goal of improving wages and benefits and building an independent worker association. For highly technical reasons, security guards cannot be organized by a union that represents any other type of worker without the consent of the employer. Allied—Barton will never consent to any type of organizing.
POWR was successful at raising wages for guards at both Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania and also winning paid sick days.
Our Board was particularly impressed with the great job this organization did at communication. We received weekly email messages and updates about their organizing campaigns.
We commend all of these terrific organizations for everything they accomplished. It was an honor to partner with them in achieving these outcomes. We urge all of our readers to visit their websites, contact these groups, and learn from their successes.
DMF Adds Great New Board Members ------------------------------------- Our 2006 Grantees ------------------------------------- 2006 Board Retreat ------------------------------------- DMF Grantee David Bacon scores high with -------------------------------------
Filmmaker Beth Bird
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