Community Voices Heard

Mission

Community Voices Heard (CVH) is an organization of low-income people, predominantly women with experience on welfare, working to build power in New York City and State to improve the lives of our families and communities. We are working to accomplish this through a multi-pronged strategy, including public education, grassroots organizing, leadership development, training low-income people about their rights, political education, civic engagement and direct-action issue campaigns. We are currently working on welfare reform, job creation, public housing and other economic justice issues that affect low-income people, particularly low-income women of color.

While we focus on welfare reform, we broadly define welfare activism to be multi-issue, and thus must include issues such as education, training, jobs, housing, economic development and other community issues. We fill a crucial gap in that our organization connects public policy with grassroots organizing and leadership development.

History

On a sunny Saturday morning, in May of 1994, a group of people, mostly women – some homeless, many on-welfare, and plenty who were unemployed – came together so that their voices might be heard. For too long, they had been shut out of the halls of power, denied a seat at the table, and trampled by both those who openly targeted the poor and those who claimed to advocate on their behalf. They were tired of a government that showed them nothing but neglect and malice. For these brave people it was now or never. No longer would the decision makers be allowed to maintain their power at the expense of the most unfortunate – the poor, women, and people of color.

At our expense.

In 1994, we said enough was enough.

We were united, motivated, and organized. We had no choice. Between 1993 and 1996, attacks on the poor were especially vicious, shrouded in lies and misinformation. Proposals to eliminate aid to poor families and children were gaining momentum and support. The radical right demonized us in order to shore up power among the middle class, eventually taking over Congress. Lawmakers were publicly discussing the option of forcing poor women to live in labor houses, making them “work off” their food and shelter. Those elected to represent us were considering supporting legislation that would put the children of women on welfare into orphanages. They told the world that we were mismanaging our money, that we were liars and cheats.

Together we demanded to be heard. We spoke up. Loudly. We reminded the world that women on welfare were going to college despite the retrogressive cycle of public assistance that demands women get off welfare without helping them find the skills and training to do so. We reminded the world that most women on welfare were in fact white and that most of us were working part time or using welfare for unemployment relief. We showed the world that we were real people, mothers with children, families with friends and neighbors.

From that first 1994 meeting of 80 people, Community Voices Heard emerged and would eventually become one of the leading organizations working for economic justice in the country.

Accomplishments

Since our founding in 1994 Community Voices Heard has grown to be a force to be reckoned with. Below are some of our accomplishments to date:

Organizational

o         Educated 25,000 low-income people about their rights and how they relate to pertinent policy issues.

o         Contacted and mobilized over 12,000 voters in the South Bronx, East and Central Harlem, and Yonkers, NY in over 50 electoral districts.

o         Mobilized over 9,200 low-income people to take a step toward action, engaging injustices in their communities in a more critical way.

o         Developed the skills of 3,400 low-income people in organizing for social change through trainings in campaign development, power analysis, and all the tools necessary to successfully create change.

o         Developed hundreds of members to take leadership roles in the organization.

o         Released ground-breaking reports on New York City’s Welfare-to-Work Programs (WEP, POP, ESP, WeCARE, etc.).

General Poverty Issues

o         Pushed New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to create a new Deputy Mayor position to focus on Health and Human Services (HHS).

o         Got New York City to create the Commission for Economic Opportunity to focus on poverty and joblessness.

Welfare Reform Campaign

o         Got HRA to increase monitoring of the WeCARE program (a program for those with mental and physical barriers to employment) and encourage vendors to do more thorough assessments, train staff in spotting mental health challenges, and alert program participants about how to change appointments rather than getting sanctioned for not attending them.

o         Won $5 million in the NY State budget for the creation of a statewide career pathways program.

o         Won positions for welfare recipients on the Human Resources Administration (HRA) Citizens Advisory Committee.

o         Got the City Council to pass the City Access to Training & Educate Law that allows welfare recipients to go to school.

o         Stopped a 25% benefit reduction in welfare grants & saved welfare for childless adults.

Building the Workforce Campaign

o         Pushed the City to create more than 20,000 plus paid transitional jobs for welfare recipients through a legislative and implementation campaign.

o         Assured that Department of Transportation (DOT) workers were rehired to finish out yearlong postings in the Parks when DOT let them go.

o         Got HRA Commissioner Robert Doar to expand the Parks Opportunity Program (POP) into the Department of Sanitation.

o         Secured an $18 million City Council appropriation for community-based programs to assist unemployed people to move into jobs.

o         Won extensions for some POP workers so that they could complete educational credentialing programs.

o         Stopped the privatization of the Parks Opportunity Program, which would have cut the wages of 3,500 workers by $2.00/hour.

o         Got the state to put create and then invest $70 million into a Wage Subsidy Program (WSP) for welfare recipients.

o         Got the Commission for Economic Opportunity (Mayor's poverty commission) to focus on the integration of the city's workforce development systems as a priority moving forward; and successfully inserted paid transitional jobs and CUNY/ SUNY access into the anti-poverty agenda.

Public Housing Campaign

o         Secured $3.5 million in funding for the NYC Housing Authority from the state for operating subsidies for the first time in ten years.

o         Stopped NYCHA from getting the Federal Moving to Work Waiver which would have potentially allowed them to privatize the buildings, add time limits for residence, and/or demolish public housing.

o         Pushed then-Governor Elliot Spitzer to sign the Shelter Allowance Bill which will provide $47 million annually for NYCHA’s operating budget.

Case Study

This is the product of a research project. Community Voices Heard: Changing People and Public Policy through Low-Income Organizing is a case study of grassroots organizing. Based on research directed by Ann Rivera of the New York University Center for Community Research & Action, and funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the piece highlights how a membership organization of low-income individuals can be an effective force for social, economic, and political change.

A team of three researchers collected data spanning ten years of CVH’s history from our beginning in 1994 to 2005, examining three different organizing campaigns: the passage of the Transitional Jobs Program law in NYC, the implementation of the program, and the ongoing improvement and preservation of the program. In-depth interviews were conducted with CVH members, current and former CVH staff, policy researchers and representatives from local labor unions, funding agencies, government agencies and offices, and other grassroots advocacy groups.

The case study helps to demystify what organizing really is, and outlines how CVH used successful strategies to actually change public policy to improve the lives of thousands of low-income people. It identifies and points to some basic tenets that can be useful to other groups undertaking similar work.

Findings from the research uncover some essentials for engaging low-income constituents to participate in public policy processes:

- building leaders fosters and sustains long-term political engagement,
- constant and targeted contact with constituents encourages long-term investment,
- engaging people in ongoing activity fosters deeper connections, and
- action-focused base building gets people interested in social change.

Additionally, the research highlights some of the critical strategies for groups striving to achieve concrete policy change:

- constituent participation in policy making strengthens public policy creation,
- personal knowledge of issues and community-driven research help fill a knowledge gap, and
- membership base-building drives effective and clear media work and winning alliances.

Theory of Social Change

Community Voices Heard believes that we must build the power of low-income people, particularly women, through building an organization that low-income people control and lead. We also believe we have a successful model that has and can continue to mobilize large numbers of low-income people to: develop into community leaders, participate in the policy making process, win concrete policies that improve our members' lives, and create a more fair and equitable community for everyone.

We believe we win on our issues and contribute to a broader movement for social change by acting on the following theories:

BUILDING A PEOPLES ORGANIZATION: Social change comes through building and maintaining strong, powerful, independent people’s organizations, not relying on mobilizing numbers of people at isolated times. At CVH, low-income people, particularly women, develop their skills, engage in political education and strategic development, and directly negotiate and deal with power. This process is key for sustaining and keeping people involved over the long-term. At the same time, it ensures that we retain a place at the negotiating table.

SHIFTING THE PARAMETERS OF THE DEBATE: We actively and strategically embrace and represent political positions that might not be popular and in the mainstream. We aim for policies that will truly improve our members’ lives and change the balance of social, economic and political power, while negotiating for concrete wins along the way. We seek a position that will move the debate away from the center, and to the left of the political spectrum, where economic justice issues are better represented.

USING A COMBINATION OF STRATEGIES: We actively embrace and implement a combined strategy of organization building, leadership development and mass mobilization. We derive our power through the effective combination of these strategies.

SEEKING AND BUILDING CONSTITUENT-LED COALITIONS: Coalition and ally work is critical to certain campaigns and goals, but we seek to participate in coalitions that are led and directed by base-building organizations that are directly accountable to their constituencies. For us, this creates opportunities to nurture and develop community leaders, which builds our organizational strength and power.

ENGAGING A BROADER MOVEMENT: While we believe that building our own organizational power is critical to social change, we support activities within and outside of our organization that help to build the greater social change and economic justice movements. This includes our work on global justice issues, training young people of color to be organizers, assisting in the start-up of other nascent organizations, and participating in key solidarity events and actions.

Operating Principles

Community Voices Heard subscribes to the following values and principles to help guide us as we move forward in implementing our strategic plan and in expanding our work:

- CVH believes that membership must have meaningful decision-making and control of the organization and the work we do.

- CVH believes that base building is the foundation of what we do – we actively work to increase the numbers of low-income people involved in social change.

- CVH believes that leadership development of community leaders is core to our work.

- CVH believes that affected constituencies must represent the organization to power and be the key decision makers in the organization.

- CVH does not do for people what they can do for themselves – we motivate people to do what they can do for themselves.

- CVH is about organizing not service.

- CVH values, nurtures and supports women’s leadership, while welcoming all.

- CVH is a multi-racial, multi-cultural and diverse organization that integrates and respects different groups of people and actively seeks to promote and develop leadership of people of color.

CVH Staff (standing, l-r): Juanita Lewis, Henry Serrano, Sarah Thomason, Diego Gerena-Quinones, Michelle Perez, Vincent Villano, Talia Schank, Sondra Youdelman. Sitting (l-r): Jenny Loeb, Taja Lindley, Mo George.

Staff Bios

Sondra Youdelman, Executive Director

Sondra has been at CVH since 2000 and was named the organization’s new Executive Director in March 2007; she was previously CVH’s Director of Public Policy and Research. Sondra has worked both in the United States and abroad to achieve social and economic justice through organizing. She has over 10 years experience as an organizer and activist with grassroots groups including farm workers, Native Americans, public housing residents, and low-income workers in the United States, and abroad for various populations throughout Latin America and in several African countries. She obtained a Master’s Degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School in order to gain policy analysis tools to bring back to the grassroots. She also has a BA in American Studies focusing on Oppression and Revolution from Wesleyan University.

Henry Serrano, Senior Organizer / Voter Engagement Project Coordinator

Henry first joined CVH as an Organizer in 2001, and was named Senior Organizer at CVH in Spring 2003. In addition to his own organizing work, supervises and guides the work of our other organizers. He is also responsible for developing and leading our Voter Engagement Project. His early work for Community Voices Heard was as the organizer working on winning implementation of the Transitional Jobs Program and organizing Parks Opportunity Program workers. His previous organizing experience includes 2 years of neighborhood-based grassroots organizing in Brooklyn for ACORN on issues including housing, education, and neighborhood services. Henry has a BA degree from New York University in comparative literature.

Michelle Perez, Director of Administration & Institutional Giving

Michelle joined Community Voices Heard as Development Director in May 2002. She is very pleased to turn her efforts to economic justice projects after having worked in fundraising for arts/community development organizations for 19 years. She has previously worked for the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Meet The Composer, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and The Joffrey Ballet. Michelle has a BA degree in Economics/Political Economy from Barnard College, and has done graduate work in business administration at New York University.

Talia Schank, Grassroots Fundraising & Communications Coordinator

Talia has worked in community activism for over 15 years, starting as a community educator and trainer. This led to student and political organizing, where she worked on a number of electoral campaigns, both candidate and issue-based. In college, she was also active with the United States Student Association through her campus student association at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she received a Bachelor's degree in Women's Studies.  Additionally, she has worked with, among others, Planned Parenthood of WI, the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, Elaine Bloom for Congress (in South Florida), Holden for Governor (Missouri), the Sierra Club, and Fair Wisconsin to fight the ban on marriage and civil unions for gay and lesbian couples.  Prior to coming to CVH, she most recently served as the Development & Program Coordinator with the Wisconsin Apprentice Organizers Project.

Vincent Villano, Policy & Research Coordinator

Vincent joined CVH in November 2008 as the Policy and Research Coordinator. Vincent has worked in the NYC housing field for the past two years. His research experience includes, most recently, partnering with national and local organizations to investigate the feasibility of using the human rights approach in NYC housing struggles. Vincent has experience working in solidarity with groups who are most affected by injustice as well as organizing his peers for more decision-making power. He has been an ally for movements ranging from Chiapas to Harlem and Venezuela while, on the organizing front, he has agitated for change both as a student and as a union member. Vincent received a BA from Bowdoin College, where he completed an honor's thesis on Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. He received a Master's degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University where he focused his studies on the right to housing in the U.S. Vincent is excited to be in a position to do research that supports CVH's direct organizing campaigns.

vincent@cvhaction.org

Taja is a recent graduate from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she designed her own major, concentrating in Public Policy and Knowledge Production with a focus on Women of Color.  Her academic work troubled the notion of the "expert," especially as it relates to policy, to include "experience-as-expertise" and to ensure that traditionally and currently marginalized communities are included in the policy-making process. She has three years of policy experience with various non-profits, research institutes and on Capitol Hill concerning federal and state legislation affecting general health disparities, reproductive justice and immigration. Before coming to CVH, Taja participated in a year-long human rights fellowship, funded by Third Millennium Foundation, where she had an opportunity to work with a grassroots women's organization in Ghana to address gender-based issues such as sexual and reproductive health, witchcraft allegations and disinheritance. Taja joins CVH as the inaugural Gail Aska Policy and Research Fellow, and is bringing her skills and perspective to CVH to support the organization's economic justice work as it relates to welfare, workforce development and anti-poverty policy, research and organizing.

Monique "Mo" George, Campaign Director, Public Housing

Mo (as she prefers to be called) joins CVH as the Public Housing Campaign Director. Mo's organizing experience started in college where she worked locally with NYPIRG as their Campus Leader. Upon graduation, Mo accepted an organizer position at SEIU Local 1199 where she worked for 9 years. After leaving 1199, Mo moved on to become the Lead Organizer at the Empire state Pride Agenda, where she fought for the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. At Pride Agenda, Mo led various statewide campaigns, including further developing their annual statewide lobby day from 400 to over 1000 participants during her tenure there. After the recent passing of her grandmother (who raised her), Mo resigned from Pride Agenda and decided to spend some time traveling the world, including time in Paris, Italy and other parts of France. Mo is now back home in New York, and is excited to be working with CVH members on Public Housing. As a proud product of "the projects," she feels that public housing must be preserved. Mo holds her BA degree from SUNY New Paltz, and an MPA from Metropolitan College. When Mo is not trying to change the world, she is usually either reading a good book, traveling or just enjoying New York with her partner of 3 years. 

mo@cvhaction.org

Sarah Thomason, Community Organizer, Public Housing

Sarah joined CVH in February of 2007 as our Community Organizer for Westchester County, and is excited to continue her work with CVH as she transitions to our Public Housing campaign. Sarah graduated from DePaul University with majors in Political Science and Women's Studies. Before coming to New York, Sarah lived in Chicago, where she worked on passing an expungement bill for ex-offenders, oragnized child care providers with SEIU and organized affordable housing residents. She is excited to apply the skills she learned in Chicago and Yonkers to the Public Housing campaign.

sarah@cvhaction.org

Dominique Trudel, Community Organizer, Welfare/Workforce Development

Dominique joined CVH in August of 2008 as the Welfare/Workforce Development organizer. In the past, she worked with ACORN in New York and Chicago as well as Grassroots Campaigns, focusing on projects for the DNC, MoveOn, Amnesty International, and other progressive groups. Dominique attended Temple University in Philadelphia where she studied Political Science and Criminal Justice. She is very excited about moving this campaign forward.

Diego Gerena-Quiñones, Sustainable Communities Organizer, Harlem

Diego joined the ranks of CVH at the end of the summer of 2008. While away on a delegation to Venezuela, Diego was presented with an opportunity to become a full time organizer under the Sustainable Communities Project in Harlem. Born and raised in the neighborhood of East Harlem/ El Barrio to a family of long time political activists, Diego has long maintained a strong interest in affecting economic development and social justice issues in his own community. Having witnessed first hand the pace and intensity of the redevelopment of all of Harlem, Diego is very eager to help in engaging the broader community of long-time residents who not only feel left out of the decision-making process, but are also being pushed out. Diego is a graduate of Political Science and Black Studies from SUNY New Paltz where he was active in various student clubs and government on issues surrounding Black/ Latino students. Since the age of 14, Diego has consistently found work doing political campaigning from voter registration (Hispanic Federation, NYPIRG), fundraising (Working Families Party), canvassing (WFP), union organizing (DC 1707) and tenant education (Operation Fight Back, CASA-New Settlement Apartments.

Juanita Lewis, Community Organizer, Westchester County

Juanita O. Lewis is excited to bring her experience to CVH.  She began her work as a community organizer with the Minnesota chapter of ACORN. Since 2004, she has worked on 10 campaigns in various roles, ranging from field organizer, campaign manager to fundraiser. Juanita was highly involved in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, serving as Saint Paul Senate District 66 chair, and secretary of the African American Caucus. She has also been a board member and chair of three non-profit boards, and is currently a fundraising trainer for the White House Project. Juanita was born and raised in Saint Paul, MN. She graduated from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities with a B.A. in History and Political Science, and recently graduated with her Masters of Advocacy and Political Leadership from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. 

juanita@cvhaction.org

Jenny Loeb, Community Organizer, Mid-Hudson Valley

Jenny has been with CVH since May 2007 as the first Mid-Hudson Valley Community Organizer.  She worked to establish the chapters in Newburgh and Poughkeepsie and continues to organize in both locations.  Operating out of the Newburgh office, Jenny works to recruit and develop low-income residents to lead local campaigns around community development, housing, and social services, as well as work with the other chapters to build statewide power.  Before joining CVH, Jenny was active in student government movements, Hudson Valley politics, and drug policy/criminal justice reform. She has a BA in Sociology from SUNY New Paltz.