CONSOLIDATING PRESENCE:
ANCHORS AND ALLIANCES
Every time that we have gotten closer, it was because we had really gone out of our comfort zone – whether it was going to a new geographic area, entering a different sector, or engaging a different kind of ally . . . – Angelica Salas, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles
This set the stage for what we call the second wave of movement building: creating anchor organizations and forging new alliances (19962000). Big – or at least bigger – organizations and alliances emerged to anchor the work. Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), a group that was shifting its attention from broad issues of environmental health to a more specific focus on environmental justice, grew in staff and finances and soon led a charge to change rules about facility-level pollution at the Air Quality
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Management District. CBE’s activists not only won that fight – surprising even themselves – they created a system of training for smaller grassroots groups as they sought to create a “regional voice” for environmental justice. Among the more memorable achievements in this era was a decree – partly obtained by legal proceedings but also by organizing and political leverage by LCSC and its allies – that forced the Metropolitan Transit Authority to hold the line on bus fares and dramatically improve service. Meanwhile, AGENDA and others successfully
L.A. RISING
