Say it with me loud and clear: real people, real power! Real people…”
“…Real power.” If you could hear a group of 50 people blushing, it would sound like that. Eric Walker is not satisfied.
“I can’t hear you guys! I said, Real people…”
“Real power!” They say it with a little more energy. Call and response is something Walker does well, and it is one of the many techniques he uses to energize people to take control of their situations. Some of the people in the audience, particularly the ones for whom this is their first monthly meeting, are struggling to say it confidently. Walker won’t continue with the agenda until everyone says it like they believe it. After all, you won’t find a more real group of people than this bunch: Mothers of three wearing sweatpants and dragging along their mustachioed, tired looking husbands; refugees from Somalia and Burma who have taken refuge in the West Side; George Toledo, a former neighborhood gangmember turned U.S. Marshal who’s on his break. The glass and metal doors of the former Grant Street library swing open as he comes in late, signing in, and quickly taking a seat in the back. These are people with jobs threatened by the bad economy, families threatened by failing schools and crime, and houses threatened by foreclosures and apathetic landlords. Most of them at one point or another have received a knock on the door from Walker or another one of the community organizers of People United For Sustainable Housing, a group formed in 2005 by Walker, a graduate of the UB class of 2001, and Aaron Bartley, a Buffalo native and alum of Swarthmore and Harvard Law.
People United For Sustainable Housing, or PUSH, is the latest in a series of community organizations that have sprung up in Buffalo to deal with the persistent issues that come with the territory of being in the top five of the poorest big cities in America. Several days a week for the past few months, people like Walker and Bartley have hit the streets and front doors of Buffalo’s West Side, hearing the horror stories of residents - some who long for the good old days, others who just look forward to a Buffalo where you can find security in the job market, as well as in the home. Door-to-door canvassing has brought people out like Ada Pawlowski and her husband Phil, who were first approached by Walker this September.
After hearing Walker’s re-introduction (he would not have appeared at her door had someone from PUSH not previously talked to her on the street during a canvass), Ada invited us upstairs and reminisced about the days when two teenage girls could take a walk over to Niagara Street at night without being bothered. Nowadays things have changed and she stays at home often; all her old friends have moved away.
The current condition is a stark contrast. “It’s the prostitutes, they walk back and forth around here, and you know where they hang out? That house right there. The other house by Herkimer Street. And the other one past that. ” Phil pointed at a crumbling Victorian house across the street with boarded up windows. As Walker and Ada talked about problems and potential solutions, Phil weaved in and out of the living room, adamant that they had to get rid of the bad elements in the neighborhood.
Which came first? The criminals and the unemployed, or the slums that provide refuge for them? With a little nudging from Ada, Walker laid out the facts again: without decent jobs within reach of the neighborhood, people will turn to crime. Without sustainable development, families will move away, leaving behind houses that become drug dens and crime scenes. It’s these pressures that turn neighborhoods bad, Walker emphasized.
“One out of every ten abandoned homes in Buffalo is owned by City Hall. The simple fact of the matter is that they could fix those homes and sell them to families, and they would bring business back into the community, but they won’t do it until we push them in that direction,” Walker repeated. Ada was convinced. Right then and there, she made the commitment to become an official member of PUSH. The next meeting was just a week away. “I’ll be there,” she said. “Phil, you’re coming to the meeting, right?”
Ada and Phil are here. As is Zaw Win, a man who spent four years as a political prisoner in Burma before starting a health clinic on the Thai-Burma border. Now he and his family do similar work here, residing at one of PUSH’s two rehabilitated properties, the 129 Chenango Street co-op house. PUSH acquired the property as a donation from the estate of Ann McQuestion, and they renovated it using donated supplies and local construction workers and apprentices, installing energy efficient green technology. PUSH claims that the house runs on the cooperative housing model based on the industrial co-op in Mondragon, Spain, considered the world’s largest worker cooperative. $75 are deducted from each month’s rent from each tenant and put into an escrow account for them, and upon wishing to become a homeowner, PUSH, in conjunction with M&T Bank, plans to match those funds four times over to make a sizable down payment.
Also here at the meeting are Raymond Jackson and Jennifer Mecozzi, long time residents of the West Side who are among the first from the neighborhood to step up and become active leaders in the group.
Jackson and Mecozzi get to report on the good news. Last Tuesday, Mayor Byron Brown, having long avoided groups like PUSH, sat down with five from the Board of Directors to discuss implementing some of the group’s ideas. PUSH has four platform points, developed over the past year directly from member input, including the demolition of 100 vacant homes, the annual rehabilitation of 100 vacant homes per year, the use of local Buffalonians to do the labor to bring money into the local economy, and the weatherization of 400 homes per year (insulating them to save home heating costs and fuel).
“I showed him on our composite map. This is my home, this is the home next door, and as you can see, it’s owned by the city. I told him how on Lawrence Street, you can get to my home; there’s a vacant garage, there’s openings through which you can get from yard to yard. There’s constant traffic: police, fights, the whole nine. And they can go right through to where my girls are,” Mecozzi said.
Mecozzi points out that calling the city’s hotline did nothing to alleviate her situation, yet when she spoke at a church meeting about it, particularly about the rotting, collapsed porch next door, someone quickly came and took it the porch down. Mecozzi recalls that at first, Mayor Brown grumbled that the porch removal was likely without legal permit; this caused her to break down and cry.
“After that, he got a little emotional and started taking more notes, and I remember his words at the end, ‘You will see an immediate response.’ An hour after I got home, they were boarding up the windows, tearing down the overgrown bushes, blockading the lot.”
“We all came out of that meeting feeling great,” Jackson says.
“I had tears in my eyes,” Mecozzi says.
“…And so did he. And that’s when I realized he was sincere,” says Jackson, referring to the Mayor.
There is much work to be done. In three weeks, there is to be a major rally on the steps of City Hall, or at least that was the plan. The Mayor’s turn-around came as a surprise, and while naturally there is suspicion towards Erie County’s notoriously corrupt and neglectful officials, the news is generally welcome among the group.
Attention focuses toward the hundred signs prepared for the rally, leaning atop the wooden stakes in the corner. The large plastic signs are official looking notices that have also been posted on the doors of abandoned and neglected houses throughout Buffalo; bright green for houses in need of rehabilitation, bright orange for houses in need of demolition. Under the title reads the charge “Notice to offender, Byron C. Brown, City of Buffalo.” Mayor Brown’s tentative cooperation means that sentence needs to be censored out of every single sign in the pile, Walker notes with a sigh.
Fast forward three weeks to Wednesday, October 7th; three weeks of nearly daily postering on street lights and corner bodegas, outreach on the streets, leafleting and word of mouth, constant calls to everyone on PUSH’s contact list, a fundraising party, and news of impending financial collapse on Wall Street, and the fateful day brings, with unexpected, chilly autumn rain. The plan is to set up at Lafayette Square, hold some speeches and comment on the morning’s good news, and in light of the Federal government’s bailout of investment firms and unruly financial institutions, march to certain specific targets in the civic center. City Hall will be avoided because at 9:00 a.m. that morning, at 398 Massachusetts Avenue, Mayor Brown and PUSH held a joint press conference announcing the commitment to demolish 500 and rehabilitate 500 houses over the next five years, using 50 percent local labor. On top of that, Mayor Brown is recommending to the Common Council that PUSH be made caretaker of 397 and 398 Massachusetts Ave so that the corridor becomes a shining example of what the rest of Buffalo can become. There will be a certain celebratory tone to the rally; that is, if anyone shows up.
Fortunately, they do, the hardcore members first. Walker, Bartley, and Zoe Hollomon, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors, who that morning took down the Notice to Offender sign on 398 Massachusetts in front of Mayor Brown, ,running around getting the speakers ready, setting up the tent, delegating tasks. Within twenty minutes, almost two dozen of the bright notices are staked into the flowerbed, framing the Civil War monument, the tent is set up, and the speakers are all lined up. The rain is on and off, but a sizable crowd has congregated. A homely woman in a flannel shirt brings a sign reading “Fight Foreclosures and Evictions, Not Iran.” Councilman David Rivera is engaged in conversation with one of his constituents, while the UB Chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild is posing for a picture with their banner, and a couple of members of Buffalo Class Action are chatting it up with their friends under the anarcho-syndicalist flag. It is a diverse crowd, spanning all ages and races. Mecozzi and Hollomon are now talking to a reporter from Channel 7 news while the drum circle begins drumming, calling out for all participants and passersby to come to the tent, sign in, and pick up a picket sign…and then as if summoned by the frantic rhythms, several giant papier-mâché figures appear with flags and start marching in circles around the group, like something out of a Guillermo del Toro film. The kids love it and race around the colorful dancers, and everyone melts onto the grass pit for the first speech, which belongs as much to the crowd as it belongs to Walker.
“Community organizing is building power with real people for the things that they know they need in their neighborhoods. We are policymakers. We are the ones that set the tone and set the agenda, and we are the ones that can get things done, right?” he says into the megaphone.
“Right!” yells the crowd.
“Now it’s raining outside, but that’s okay, because when we bring the energy for real we make rain, thunder, hail, snow, and earthquakes. I wanna hear a little footstomp. Gimme a footstomp right now.”
The crowd obliges. In keeping up with the spirit of the movement, the speeches are interactive, personal, and informative. Reverend Carter opens the rally with a prayer, and after Hollomon officially announces the results of the morning press conference to wild applause, the march is on. Lafayette Square directly faces City Hall and the courts, and the state and federal buildings where, the speakers inform the crowd, bills are written and enforced that could make or break neighborhoods. Currently the state legislature is pondering a bill that would offer $2 billion in aid to create green jobs in New York—“Two billion dollars! Who’s ready to claim it!” screams Walker—and as the crowd stops in front of the Mahoney State Building on Court Street, Reverend Carter retakes the megaphone for a powerful sermon —
“Economic Justice. Economic Justice…” He emphasizes each word with years of preaching experience. “…Is a moral value. It is a moral imperative!”
Fittingly, the Coalition for Economic Justice is present, banner in hand. One among their contingent is Joanna Boron, a junior linguistics major with minors in Polish Studies and African American Studies. As a native of Cheektowaga and a student at UB, she is both bound to and isolated from what is going on in the area.
“Supporting local struggles is an awesome thing for students to do, it connects us to the town, and turns it into more than just a place to pass through. It’s plugging yourself back in. Movements like this affect everyone no matter how small or localized they may seem.”
Like many of the speakers here today, Rev. Carter is talking about the misconceptions and realities of working class people (and by extension the middle class), particularly enraged by something he heard on a financial talk show on the radio, where a caller said the poor shouldn’t be given concessions in the bailout bill—
“…because people who are poor are poor because they are lazy. They are poor because they fail to work. I wanted to call in myself and say ‘lies, lies, lies!’ People who are poor are not poor because they are lazy! They are not poor because they refuse to work! They are poor because people like you continue to be bailed out, when you have been greedy, when you have been—can I use a Biblical word—when you have been lascivious with our money!”
Not one to shy down from following a difficult act, Walker takes the mic again.
“Can I say something?” he cautiously asks the crowd.
“You break it. You bought it. The bailout—is bullshit.”
The crowd, drums and bells raging, passes Niagara Circle in front of City Hall, eliciting a few honks from passing cars. You can hear the anger in their voices, particularly as they squeeze through Flint Alley, which borders the under-construction Federal Courthouse. Perhaps the most poignant moment in the afternoon comes when a speaker from Buffalo ReUse (something of a PUSH equivalent on the East Side), has his turn at the megaphone, standing in front of the brand new Federal Building on South Elmwood.
“Do any of you know anyone who’s working on that job right now?” He points directly at the construction site.
The negative response from the crowd is overwhelming.
“Does anybody know anybody in their neighborhood that is working on the $1 billion capital reinvestment program for our schools here in Buffalo?”
“No!”
“Does anybody know anybody in their neighborhood that is getting a chunk of the 150 to 300 million we are going to be spending next year on demolition? Anybody?”
“No!”
This is the expansion of the environmental movement, as emphasized by the green hard hats worn by the members of ReUse. Without proper development and planning, without having the members of a community actually be responsible for building, demolishing, and re-building their towns, without opportunities within easy physical reach, there is no sustainability. The message of today’s rally is that it is about economics as much as it is about technology.
Weeks earlier, one disheartened West Side resident put his hands up in frustration, looked at me and complained:
“The way things are going, in twenty years, I think Buffalo is going to be one big vacant lot.”
Yet today, in the innermost ring of the doughnut city that is Buffalo, hope is the order of the day. The agreement the citizens now have with City Hall is that every 90 days there will be a review to check up on the progress being made, house-by-house.
A week later, the first time the whole crew is back in the Grant Street library since the rally, Jackson reflects on what is going on.
“The fire is already started, we just gotta blow it and spread it. We gotta spread out over to the East Side. We’re getting ready to put something on this city.”
