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The Center for Community Change Honored as a Progressive Champion
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Deepak Bhargava accepts Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award at America’s Future Now! conference
Tuesday, Jun 02, 2009For Immediate Release: Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Contact: Germonique R. Ulmer 202-339-9331; gulmer@communitychange.org
Washington – Today, the Center for Community Change and its executive director, Deepak Bhargava, will be honored at the largest gathering of progressive activists and leaders from across the country. The America’s Future Now! (formerly Take Back America) conference will salute progressive champions at their annual awards gala and present the Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award to the Center.
The Paul Wellstone Award is given to those whose accomplishments and achievements reflect Wellstone’s work as an organizer, an educator and an activist for progressive initiatives and organizations. For more than 40 years, the Center for Community Change has been a leader in the progressive movement, building the field of community organizing with hundreds of grassroots groups nationwide at a time in our country’s history when low income communities and communities of color were being hurt by our nation’s policies.
“At the Center, we believe that the core commitments of any progressive movement should be to the most vulnerable members of our society - poor people, people of color and immigrants,” said Deepak Bhargava. “One of the most tragic failings during the period of conservative dominance was that not only were the issues of poverty and racial justice were not addressed, they were taken off the table and made invisible.”
The Center for Community Change isn’t just any DC based organization. Our work has gained recognition for its ability to bring together, across race, ethnicity, issue and geography, authentic grassroots voices into the political discourse using unique community organizing tools and leveraging power that has helped low income communities have a seat at the table. Twice, the Center has brought the voices of low income and communities of color to one-on-one dialogues with the presidential candidates during the ’04 and ’08 elections.
As community organizing has gained prominence in recent months with the election of “Community Organizer-in-Chief” President Barack Obama, the Center for Community Change is having a significant impact on transformational change in Washington, which could soon include a new immigration system that brings 12 million undocumented people out of the shadows and a health care system available and affordable to us all.
In Washington Life Magazine’s most recent issue of the Power 100, they describe Deepak and the Center like this: “Bhargava may not be the most famous Harvard-educated-former-community organizer in Washington, but as the leader of one of the nation’s largest grass-roots community advocacy groups, he has plenty of influence.”
You can also see video of the event at http://www.ourfuture.org/video/2009062303/awards-gala.
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Since 1968, the Center for Community Change has strengthened the leadership, voice and power of low-income communities nationwide to confront the vital issues of today and build the social movements of tomorrow. www.communitychange.org
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