CCV Briefing Call

Operator:  Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Campaign for Community Values Briefing Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we’ll conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance from an operator, please press *, then 0, on your touch-tone telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Gabe Gonzalez. Mr. Gonzalez, you may begin.

Gabe Gonzalez:  Hi, this is Gabe Gonzalez. I’m the Campaign Director for the Center for Community Change and I’m going to be moderating the conference today. I want to thank everybody for participating.

 The reason we’re doing this press conference today is we really-- I think everyone in America would agree that this is one of-- this is a historic moment in the life of our country. It’s not simply a question of what’s going on with the economy, or a question of what’s going on politically, but I think we all recognize that we’re on the cusp of either a renewed turn to greatness or possibly a long and steep decline.

The people you’re going to hear today are people that are working very hard to make sure that America realizes its promise. They are community organizers, community activists, local grassroots leaders from around the country who are dedicated to making sure that the outcome of this historic moment we’re in is one that’s positive for the country.

The Center for Community Change has been involved in efforts like this over the past 40 years, working with community organizations around the country on issues that affect real people.

For the last couple of years, we’ve been working on something called the Campaign for Community Values. The idea behind this campaign is a fairly simple one -- it’s that values are the prime motivator for people when it comes to their public life. The values that people hold in terms of their family, in terms of their religious beliefs, in terms of their beliefs about politics or the economy are really sort of firmly centered in their world view.

One of the things we believe most firmly is that a core American value is that of interdependence. The concept that we are all in it together is one that we were all taught at an early age and that we’ve all grown up with and that we’ve had real evidence of as of late when it came to what happened in the meltdown on Wall Street.

So this core value, the one of interdependence and community values, is at the heart of this campaign. How it works is very straightforward. We work with community organizations around the country, mobilizing people, training people, having folks understand and articulate the forces that affect their lives; meet with decision-makers, explain to those decision-makers what it is they want done; and then, back up the conversations they’ve had by taking action.

This action takes a number of forms. What you’re going to hear about today are several of those forms. One of the most important, obviously, in 2008 is the electoral work that we do. We work with nonprofits across the country to make sure that people have the ability to vote, that they’re registered to vote, that their right to vote is protected, and that, come election day, they exercise that right.

We also work with community organizations to articulate what it is that their community needs and to speak directly to power -- in this case, most particularly those in Washington -- about that. And we’ll be talking about the work that we do to have those public forums, have those public meetings, create space for real people to talk to representatives. And that will be mostly highlighted by the work that we’re doing with one of our partner organizations, the Gamaliel Foundation, through their Faith and Democracy efforts and through a meeting we’ll be putting together in Washington called Realizing the Promise, a Forum on Community, Faith, and Democracy, that we’ll be holding in December.

And then finally, what we’ll talk about is how all of this gets practiced in the newest election. After November of this year, we’re going to have a new Congress and a new administration. The outcome of that is still questionable, but they will all be new. And the makeup of Congress will be new. And we firmly believe that it is important for people to actively participate in their own democracy. And we’ve been working with community organizations that practice these beliefs for the past two years on the Campaign for Community Values and we’ll be hearing from one of the organizations that’s planning on participating on making that real during the first 100 days of a new administration.

 
 To begin, I want to start by turning it over to Rudy Lopez, who is our Political Director, who’s going to explain a little bit more about the electoral program and how it works. Rudy?

 Rudy Lopez:  Thank you, Gabe, and thank you for all of you that have joined the call today. We have a very-- we’re at a very exciting time for the Campaign for Community Values and the Community Voting Project. We’re sitting just 13 days away from a very important election where immigrants, people of color, and low-wage whites will leave their mark on this election -- but not just through turnout alone, although that’s extremely important.

But they’re going to leave their mark by having a deeper connection that lasts beyond the election day because the heart of our work is not just through registration and turnout but building relationships with these constituencies so that we have a long-term connection with them so they continue to work beyond election day.

And that’s what makes our program different than many others. We have hundreds of volunteers thorough the country -- people like Selena Salserra, who registered to vote for the first time in Florida. And she registered because she feels so passionately about her community that she enjoyed it and got reengaged through one of our groups there called The Florida Immigration Coalition, and she herself became a volunteer. So Selena, like many others, will be reengaged after the election through the Campaign for Community Values to continue to work on many of these important issues.

Our program up to this point, the Community Voting Project, is a nonpartisan volunteer effort that has, up to this point, registered over 94,292 voters. Thirty-six groups representing 25 states have worked really hard to make sure that issues like humane and just immigration reform, affordable health care for all, and job creation and fair wages for everyone, especially immigrants, people of color, and low-wage whites, are at the forefront of this election.

One of the things that we are very committed to is making sure that all the people involved in our program have a good experience so that they’ll continue to be part of the program after it’s done.

 We match all of our voter registrations, as a quality-control method, through the Catalyst voter file. We also have an independent verifier with a sample portion of our list that goes through it in order to pull out and look at all of the registrations to make sure that they match correctly. 

 Our GLTB program, up to this point, has connected and reached out to over 47,000 people. We are looking for reaching to over a quarter million people through a door, mail-in, phone program.

We also have an election protection effort that is spread out throughout the country in many of the key states that we’re working -- places like Nevada Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, just to name a few.

 Our program is one in which we feel that through-- a direct connection with this constituency will result in a large turnout; that the effects we’ll see way beyond election day.

 So at this point, I would like to introduce John Liss -- he’s the Executive Director from Tenants and Workers United -- who’ll talk to you a little bit more about what’s happening in Virginia and the great work that they’re doing there. John?

John Liss: Thanks, Rudy. A little bit about Tenants and Workers United. We started just over 20 years ago as a small project in one neighborhood trying to prevent the planned mass eviction of 10,000 both African-Americans and Latino immigrants. And just as our organization has grown, so has the potential for immigrant and African-American voter impact on elections.

 We didn’t do much voter work for our first 20 years; we’ve organized around education reform, trying to make sure that our public schools prepare every student for college, including immigrant and African American students. We work around healthcare access because many of our members are part of the 45 million Americans without health care. So we’ve won medical debt relief, debt relief of over $2 million in the last couple of years.

And we also work with a variety of low-wage workers, including day laborers, who we work with in order to organize the corner and get better and fair treatment of the day laborers.

For us, it was a logical expansion, or extension, of our work to begin doing this voter work. As I mentioned, we were sort of a gateway community for many who first came to this country and arrived and over the last 20 years have bought houses and moved, in many cases, to Fairfax County, which is away from our original headquarters in Alexandria. And now we’re having a chance to reconnect with them and many, many more people as we’re visiting literally tens of thousands of immigrant and new voters in Virginia.

And it’s really exciting on the doors, because we’re talking to people about two issues we care about very much -- one is the need for just and humane immigration reform, or immigration laws; and the need for some kind of universal health care. And it’s resonating. And we’re trying to explain to people that their vote-- in Virginia, particularly, it makes a big, big difference. We know that in recent elections, 5,000 or 10,000 votes has separated the winner from the loser. So while we’re nonpartisan, we’re very clear about the need for improvements in our health care as well as immigration reform. So we’re out there talking. There’s real excitement on the doors -- people are volunteering, people are calling up and going canvassing, canvassing their neighborhood.

And the second piece that we try and emphasize is it’s important to follow up after the election. Whoever gets elected on November 4, we know we’ve got lots of work to do from November 5 and on. The voting is very important -- one minute in the voting booth, if you will -- but it’s going to take ongoing organizing and participation by the thousands of new people that we’ve met through this voter work who, I think, are going to make a difference and push through the policies that we really care about.

Gabe Gonzalez:     Rudy?

Rudy Lopez:  Thank you, John. I next want to be able to put it over to Sandra Cook, who is a leader with the Virginia Organizing Project. And she’s going to talk to you a little bit more about the work that they’re doing statewide throughout Virginia. Sandra?

Sandra Cook:   I am Sandra Cook, Vice-Chairperson of the Virginia Organizing Project, a statewide grassroots organization that works with diverse constituencies in rural and urban areas throughout Virginia. We get people active who have never been active before, especially around health care, racial profiling, predatory lending, childcare subsidies, and many other issues. We work to create a strong web of relationships across the state so that people can work together for the common good, reflecting the we-are-all-in-it-together approach.

This year, we worked with 20 other nonpartisan groups to register new voters, help people understand the absentee voting system -- because there is no early voting in Virginia, only absentee ballots -- and help former felons file applications to get their voting rights restored in all corners of the state; and in between, too.

We distributed 300,000 nonpartisan voter guides. We also worked on election protection activities. For example, we held meetings with many registers with voting experts, and regular grassroots folks, to make sure the registers will be able to deal with the record turnout this year. We also are involved in many get-out-the-vote activities and events -- door-knocking, phone-banking -- in communities across the commonwealth. 

But these are not short-term efforts. For example, a local grocer in a low-income neighborhood in Richmond is giving out a voter guide to each customer and encouraging them to use his telephone to contact the register of their area and find out where their polling place is, if they don’t already know where it is. The great thing about this is that the grocer will be in this for a long term after the election, encouraging people to be active in their community in many other ways.

The Community Values message is resonating with people, especially around health care. We are finding that in the meetings with our state legislators, they want to hear more about the stories that we have to give. And they’re seeing it and hearing it in a broader context. And this is because they know that we’ve been out there knocking on the doors, canvassing neighborhoods, and they know that because we’ve been doing this, we have lots of stories to share. In fact, they are letting us-- and people are now more active with going to legislators and in fact telling their own stories.

We are really excited about getting people more active, and we will continue to do this, no matter who is elected, because we believe the community accountability is the key element in our democracy.

Gabe Gonzalez:  All right. Well thank you, Sandra. So I think what you’ve heard there is really a couple of different things. It’s clear that the folks involved in the efforts that we’ve been putting together around electoral politics are ones that are directly affected by the issues. These are people organizing their own communities.

I think we also heard a lot about the multi-issue nature of the work -- that it’s not only nonpartisan, but that they’re not restricted to one particular issue or one particular interest group, but rather looking at communities as a whole.

And the last point that I think every one of the speakers mentioned I think really lends itself to what we’re going to talk about next, and that’s this idea that the electoral activity that people are engaging in right now is only one aspect of a program of change.

So the Gamaliel Foundation, who we’ve been partnering with for many years now, is a really good example of how all of that sort of work comes together. I want to introduce, in a second, Ana Garcia-Ashley from the Gamaliel Foundation, who’s going to talk about how their work on values through the Faith and Democracy Forums they’ve been putting together, and their work with us, the Center for Community Change, to put together the Realizing the Promise Forum in Washington, DC, is also part of a broader pattern of engaging people in their democracy and creating change. So Ana, do you want to take it from here?

Ana Garcia-Ashley:  Yes, good morning. This is Ana Garcia-Ashley, the Southern Territory Director with the Gamaliel Foundation. And just briefly, let me say a few words about Gamaliel. We were established in 1968 to provide training and development to faith-based leaders to develop and maintain organizations that empower ordinary people to be effective in political, environmental, and social and economic decisions. We currently have 61 affiliates worldwide -- 52 in the United States, 4 in Great Britain, and 5 in South Africa.

This has been a really exciting time. We started in 2004 with the Roaring Thunder, where we held 26 of these forums across the country and 52,000 people participated. We established this relationship with the Center for Community Change to actually continue on this journey, building a new America. And as everybody knows, this is an extremely exciting time.

So we are calling it Faith and Democracy, our forum. We will hold 37 forums across the country, all together with the Center for Community Change allies and affiliates. There are going to be 80 forums across the country -- these exciting forums with real people bringing their values and talking about real issues.

These are conversations in our home towns with our Congressional leaders, our local and state leaders, so that we can begin this dialog of birthing this new America around real issues that we hold so dear.

So these forums are happening all across the country and we, as Gamaliel, of course, work with the state communities. So this is very important for us to get our people to participate in the democratic process.

What I would like to do now is really give one of our affiliates from the great state of Minnesota, the architect of the Faith and Democracy conversations that have been going on for the last four years in this whole journey to get to Washington on December 4. Doran Schrantz is Director of ISAIAH in Minnesota, and she will tell you what the thing looks like -- what are these community values conversations? What are these Faith and Democracy conversations? What do they really look like? They just held theirs in Minnesota, so I’m going to turn it over to her. Doran?

Doran Schrantz:  Thanks, Ana. Again, my name is Doran Schrantz. I’m the Director of ISAIAH, Minnesota, which is a Gamaliel affiliate. And we have over 100 congregations that are members of ISAIAH in the metropolitan region of the Twin Cities as well as St. Cloud, which is a small town about an hour and a half north of the Twin Cities. And we are just coming off our two Faith and Democracy Forums -- one we had in the metro area with 3200 people; and one we had in St Cloud, with about 800 people.

And the way that we really used these events was to have a way for people of faith, ordinary people of faith from the suburbs, from the cities, from greater Minnesota be able to really come together and assert that we are all connected, and that our core values as citizens are also our core values as people of faith. That we are interdependent, and there’s no way we can get out of that with one another.

And so what we did was really frame the core issues that people are facing inside that message. And we had people tell stories about civil rights for immigrants and the need for comprehensive immigration reform; the profound need that people have to address the issue of health care; as well as infrastructure development and job creation.

We moved into those events in a way that also brought along with us over 200 clergy and religious leaders who participated as well as over 150 candidates and officials who participated with us on those days.

One of the most interesting outcomes of being in the room in the metro area with the 3200 people, Senator Amy Klobuchar participated with us. And she sat and heard people’s stories and people’s passionate testimonies about putting community values at the center of our common life together as we move forward. And our intention not only to land on November 4 but to go beyond November 4 into being a part of building a larger movement for a new America. And many people told us, who had been watching Amy Klobuchar for years, that she had never been more eloquent. Because she didn’t speak about a checklist of issues, but what she spoke about, and what she was very moved about, were her own values and her own connection to faith communities. And how she wanted to also be a leader and a part of a movement like the one that we were creating, and is open to participating with us on December 4 at the Realizing the Promise event.

And I think as we’ve left those events, what’s been most energizing to people is this feeling, this knowledge, that we are a part of a larger movement through the Gamaliel Foundation but also in partnership with the Campaign for Community Values. The knowledge that we’re connected to people all across this country who share these values has been inspiring and unbelievably energizing for the people in our organization. So with that, I’ll turn it back to Ana.

Ana Garcia-Ashley:  Thank you, Doran. I just wanted to emphasize that we’re in the middle of all these forums; they’re still going on, I have to put a plug that our forum here in Georgia, in Decatur, is tomorrow night.

So these forums are exciting, and they’re focusing on the message of our issues and our values. And they’re having an impact and leading off to the excitement coming up with the election. And it doesn’t end on November 5. We are going to gather in Washington on Realizing the Promise with our congresspeople, with a transition team, with a new administration, where are real people from all these 80 forums are going to come together at the Washington Hilton and begin a dialog -- or, rather, continue this dialog -- with the decision-makers. So that our issues from our people are setting the agenda for this new administration and for this new America -- not just for ’09, for years to come.

So just to make it clear, the event, Realizing the Promise, the Forum on Community Faith and Democracy, will be on December 4 at the Washington Hilton and we’ll talk a little more later on about what’s going to happen after the forum. But this is the great journey that we’re on together. Thank you, Gabe.

Gabe Gonzalez:  Sure. So that’s a couple of examples, a couple of really good examples, of how all this comes together. There are 80 of these forums across the country where real people are having real conversations about values and about, sort of, “what is your prime motivation?” with people in power. And from that standpoint, they are acting on it. They’re getting people out to vote, they’re talking about their values. And where it all culminates is what happens next year.

I think we all recognize that the next Congress is probably going to have on its plate a set of priorities and a set of demands that are unprecedented, at least in my lifetime, because of the situation the country finds itself in with the war, with the economy, with unresolved issues around health care, around immigration, and with what looks like a desire to change the direction of the country. Which direction it’s headed remains to be seen, but it’s certainly clear that there’s a desire to change the direction.

So getting grassroots people involved in that process and getting them to understand that they can have a voice, not only in their local districts but also in Washington, is no small task. Ed Shurna, who’s on the line with us from Chicago, is one of the people who’s been involved in the process of thinking about what do we have to do to get real voices heard in Washington, DC, in the halls of power? And so he’s going to talk a little bit about what we think the next logical step in this campaign is. Ed?

Ed Shurna:  Thanks, Gabe, and good morning. The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless is an advocacy organization. We formed 28 years ago because of the growing number of homeless people on the street. So we organize homeless men and women and youth on issues of affordable housing and living wage jobs and the need for social services.

Over the last 10 years, we’ve worked primarily on the state level, organizing for policy and legislation in Springfield, the state capitol. From this experience, we’ve learned a couple of really important lessons. These are lessons that we’ve shared with the campaign. One, to be successful in passing legislation, influencing policy, we have to build political muscle and we have to flex that muscle. That’s why we register people to vote through homeless shelters and supportive housing.

 And that’s why we’ll participate and be a strong supporter in the December 4th even, Realizing the Promise event, in Washington, DC. We know that numbers of people organized together make a difference. But here’s the important thing. Here’s the crucial thing we learned from taking busloads of people to Springfield for big rallies. You have to be regular and consistent, in constant contact with policymakers and legislators, if you’re really going to be successful. So that now we send vanloads of people every week, or very other week, to Springfield so that the homeless men, women, and youth can tell their own stories on why we need affordable housing or living wage jobs.

We really weren’t successful for a couple of years when we only had a big rally, went home, and then returned the day before the final vote was taken. So what does this all mean for the campaign? In January, when the new president is sworn in and the new Congress convenes, for the first 100 days of this new administration, the Campaign for Community Values is going to send teams of grassroots renters and homeowners, farmers and homeless people, immigrants, to Washington on a weekly basis. So no matter who wins the presidency, or who’s elected to Congress, we need to let everyone’s voice be heard. Especially -- especially those voices who are not often heard from -- the homeless, the poor, people of color, immigrants. We can’t just sit at home after the election is over. We have to be heard in the halls of Congress on a steady, consistent, and constant basis.

And so that’s our plan for how we’re going to move from December 4 on through the first 100 days of the new Congress. Gabe?

Gabe Gonzalez:   All right; thanks, Ed. So at this point, I think we’ve given you a good sense of what we’re up to and what we’re going to do. So I’m not going to waste any more time on that. I’d like to talk now and see if there are any questions. If we could open up the line for questions, Operator?

 Operator:  All right. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, if you have a question, please press the 1 key on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the # key. Once again, if you have a question, please press the 1 key. Thank you. One moment while we wait for any questions. At this time, I’m showing no questions.

 Gabe Gonzalez:  Okay. So one of the things that struck me about this is that many of the people on the call talked about regardless of who’s in power. So we all know -- and I’ll just speak frankly, here -- I think there’s a perception that grassroots community organizations really only are interested in sort of more progressive power in Washington. So John, you were the first to talk about this. Why does it not matter who’s in power?

 John Liss:  Honestly, whichever presidential candidate wins, we don’t think there will be immigration reform that’s just and humane unless more people are organized and pressing (inaudible). Similarly, on health care, we know that there’s not going to be a policy that really covers everybody that needs to be covered, all the uninsured, including those with a variety of different levels of documentation -- once again, unless people are organized and sort of taking it to the street, taking it to the legislature in a variety of different ways.

 So that’s our message on the doors -- vote for who you might want to, but then that’s not going to be enough. Those 10 seconds are important, but if you’re not out there day in and day out afterwards; if this thing (inaudible) to fight for, we’re not going to win it.

 Gabe Gonzalez:  Doran, you have worked with a very different constituency. Is it the same message that you use in Minnesota?

 Doran Schrantz:  A similar message. I think part of our core mission and identity as ISAIAH, especially with people of faith who cross, like, all the political spectrum in terms of party affiliation -- I think the importance of framing and working out of a value context has been critical to our work. To say regardless of whether or not you’re a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent, we share these common values and we’re going to put those common values into the public arena.

And secondly, I’ll just reiterate that no matter who wins the election, to really move our common agenda we have to be engaged with our public officials, like, all the way through the process. And I think the membership of ISAIAH both understands that and appreciates that role -- the role of ordinary people in the larger political process as being essential to making America work.

 Gabe Gonzalez:  Okay. Operator, are there any questions at this point?

 Operator:  Once again, if you have a question, please press the 1 key. There are no questions.

 Gabe Gonzalez:  Okay. Ana, can you talk a little bit more about Faith and Democracy, and actually Realizing the Promise, and what we want to see happen in Washington with this event coming so shortly on the heels of the election?

 Ana Garcia-Ashley:  Thank you, Gabe. One of the things that I forgot to make the connection is that Gamaliel and the Center for Community Change allied and we have partnered in the Highland Forum, which last year, last (inaudible) a primary in Iowa. If you recall, we had five presidential candidates to commit to attend Realizing the Promise.

 So we have been working all this time, really at the grassroots level and in our congregations, to make sure that our people are engaged and involved and that we keep the promise, help the candidates keep the promise to the people to have our voices be heard in any policy and decision-making. So the Faith and Democracy is a dialog at every local congregation across our network so people can really talk about a deep-felt beliefs and values and what they’d like to see their world look like. And then bring it out to the community and also engage in a dialog with the president, Congress, and our transition teams so that we are sure the real people and real values and real issues are part of the policies that will come out of this new administration.

Gabe Gonzalez:   Okay; thank you very much, Ana. So just want to check one more time. Operator, are there any questions at this point?

 Operator:  We have no questions.

Gabe Gonzalez: Okay. You know what? I think unless-- I would like to open it up just one more time. Sandra or Ed, if there’s anything else that you feel you want to add or that we’ve missed, we should do that. And then if there are no more questions, then we should just wrap up.

Ed Shurna: The only thing I would add, Gabe, is on the question of who’s in power and whether that makes a difference. I’ve been a community organizer for 40 years and when we first-- I was involved in the organization and passing the Reinvestment Act back in the early ‘70s when Richard Nixon was in power. And then we worked on energy when Jimmy Carter was in power. It-- you have to deal with the reality that’s there. And so whoever’s elected, we’re going to be pushing the values and the things that people at the grass roots care about. The homeless folks, because they’re homeless, care about housing; they care about how to pay for their housing and (inaudible) jobs. So we just have to address who’s ever in power, and that’s really an important part that all organizations, grassroots organizations, understand.

Gabe Gonzalez: Okay. Sandra, you get a chance at the last word.

Sandra Cook:  Okay. I just want to add that whoever’s in power, we want to make sure that the voices of the people are heard. The issues are out there and they’ve been going on for a while. And now we need people to understand that these are real issues, these are real stories that are coming from constituents. And we need some change to occur.

 So it doesn’t matter who’s going to be in office; there are still going to be some issues around affordable housing. There’s still issues out there about affordable health care. Racial profiling is still going on and we need to let it be known that it is going on. Predatory lending is out there and it is hurting people -- working people, poor people. And we just need it to be known that these are issues that are out there. We have people who are willing to work on these issues and we want to make sure that legislators know that these are real issues that are going on and that we need them to help us to make the change so that our community will be better.

 Gabe Gonzalez:   All right. Thank you very much, Sandra. And on that note, I just want to mention to any members of the press who might be on the line -- if you have any other further questions, or you’d like to talk to any of the participants further individually, you can reach out to Mary Moreno at our office. And her information is on the attachments and the notices you got for this. And we’d like to thank everyone for participating and we’ll be talking to you again after the election. Thank you very much.

Several: Thank you.

Operator:  Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This concludes the program; you may all disconnect.