Getting real with a community organizer

In Downtown Los Angeles's Skid Row, General Jeff proves that community activists can make a powerful difference.

On a corner deep in the heart of Skid Row during a hot, sunny afternoon, there are a couple dozen people milling around the entrance to the Midnight Mission, one of the homeless shelters and recovery facilities in the neighborhood. One man is selling cigarettes. Another man, in a dingy white Panama hat and white loafers sits in a lawn chair, listening to his boom box. Just down the street sits the Central Division Police Station. It looks like a fortress.

Beyond law enforcement, this is not a neighborhood that gets a lot of attention. The man I am meeting, who asked to be identified as General Jeff, is a community organizer, a job that was recently vilified and mocked by Gov. Sarah Palin and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani [recently] at the Republican National Convention. Jeff is a c.o. for what is perhaps the least organized community in the country. And it's quite large. According to the 2000 Census, there are approximately 17,000 residents in Central City East. (For the record, that is approximately three times as big as Wasilla when Palin was elected). There are 3.7 million people in the City of Los Angeles -- and only one mayor.

On this afternoon, Jeff is late. He has been passing out fliers for the new DASH (Downtown Area Short Hop) route starting in Central City East (Skid Row's official name). It's Jeff's responsibility to "give out all this information to [his] constituents". He talks about their short attention spans, how some of them can't read, how he would go through the flier "line by line" if someone needs it.

Palin and Giuliani's mockery indicated that they didn't think a community organizer had any real worth or power: the race for the presidency is a race for the most constituents, and maybe the Republicans don't believe community organizers have any. Or perhaps the Republicans and Palin think community organizers don't do anything. According to Palin, being "a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."

Well, it certainly looks like Jeff has responsibilities, but what exactly is a community organizer, who are his constituents and what does he do for them?

General Jeff is the first to admit that it's hard to stick a definition on the title of "Community Organizer." He thinks that's why it's so easy to laugh at the idea — "even if you could stick a definition on it, that would be limiting," he says.

"There isn't enough paper in the world to list everything I do."

In the past year, General Jeff has taken part in starting a basketball league, a street-cleaning program, and a program to put murals on some of the grey, depressing walls that line Skid Row's streets. This doesn't include any number of other, quotidian measures he has accomplished -- like handing out the DASH public information fliers)to better the lives of Skid Row's residents.

To him, a community organizer is someone who is "active in the community, doing good things, fighting the good fight, if you will."

That's fairly vague, but he's also at City Hall everyday. Every week, he reviews the Council's agenda, highlighting any item dealing with Skid Row. He attends those hearings, filling out a speaker's card and testifying on behalf of residents. Jeff says that there are three shifts on Skid Row: the day shift, the night shift, and the graveyard shift, and he hits the streets during all three, checking in with the residents and passing along information.

That morning, he had also met with a representative from one of the developers who is converting lofts along Main Street to discuss some of the issues related to the new development. "I go heavy on the emails," he laughs. *CONTINUES