Community Organizers // Current

Indigenous tribes reject land sale

A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part of South Africa has been blocked after a passionate campaign by the local Khoi-San community, tribes commonly known in the West as Bushmen.

But the filmmakers underestimated the will of the local 5,000-strong population who put the spiritual value of the land over any potential economic gain and nixed the plan last month.

"No money in the world can buy this land," says Ina Basson, secretary of the Pella Community Forum. "It is ours and has sentimental value. Our forefathers fought the Germans for this land and had to battle to keep it. They have spilled blood for the land and for us, and it is not for sale.

"[The producers] said Mel Gibson and Halle Berry would fly in to do movies, and that Tiger Woods would design the golf course," adds Ms. Basson. "We don't care about them. We want to live here."

The Rev. Cyril Smith, whose cathedral would have been made into a Mexican village film set, says the consortium miscalculated the level of opposition and the legal status of the land. "They should have consulted the residents first but they didn't, which made them very angry," he says. "The government, as trustees, aren't allowed to sell this land without their consent, so the film studios will not happen."

"Not even a handful will I sell to them," says farmer Piet Eiman, one of the area's oldest residents, holding pieces of soil in his hands. "We are part of the land, it can support you from a baby, to a young child, to a man. It is part of us."

Rudolf Markgraaff, chief executive at Charis Productions, one of the companies looking to purchase or lease the tribal land, says he was surprised at the opposition. "This area is desperately poor with 70 percent unemployment, high rates of AIDS, and limited facilities like hospitals and schools.

"We had letters of support from the [African National Congress] Youth League, the ANC Women's League, and another group begging us to make it happen," Markgraaff says. "They're not doing anything with this land."

But Mr. Markgraaff is wrong. The local population is preserving their culture, with some families practicing the traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle, and others herding cattle and goats, or farming desert crops. These ways of life would be threatened or destroyed by the presence of such large-scale commercial development. A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part of South Africa has been blocked after a... more

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1 month ago

ACORN office in Vegas raided in voter-fraud probe

Acorn was the group which Obama was a member while he was a community organizer. Why would such a great group be targeted for... more

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