An ongoing effort in a public housing development outside Boston represents a serious plunge by DSA/YDS into grassroots organizing. Since summer 1998, a small, dedicated group of activists has been working doors at Mystic Housing in Somerville, Massachusetts, trying to establish a core of committed residents who will fight for a better quality of life. The group, part of a coalition of progressives in Massachusetts called the Working Family Agenda, hopes to raise the minimum wage, roll back draconian welfare reforms, give low-income workers more tax credits, and re-build the safety net for senior citizens.

"I’d like to organize myself out of a job," said Josh Meehan, 26, who organizes part-time for DSA. "The goal is to establish a network of grassroots activists that will be an autonomous network."

Meehan first got involved with the project through Neighbor to Neighbor, a national group that advocates for low-income people’s empowerment. From N2N, he learned about what was happening at Mystic and the Working Family Agenda. Meehan often walks the Mystic neighborhood with Millie Duffy, a mother of three young children who worries with her husband Daniel about paying the bills each month. Duffy got involved in the Working Family Agenda campaign last summer after organizers came to her door to tell her about it. A resident of public housing, she was familiar with the issues the organizers were pushing. She found out she could make change happen right in her building.

"Even though I don’t talk so much, people know me and they know my kids, so they’re not afraid to open the door," she said. "Josh said he doesn’t want us to rush, because he wants the people we meet to understand the issues. There’s been a lot of problems with welfare; it’s not fair that people have to hide that they work."

Many Mystic residents speak Haitian Creole, Spanish or Vietnamese, so organizers carry voter registration forms and other materials in several languages. They bring postcards that bear messages for state representatives which neighborhood residents fill out and sign. Residents are encouraged to write why they think more state funding for child care is crucial, or to argue for extensions of the two-year time limits for welfare. They usually have no trouble talking about why they need more than the minimum wage to feed and clothe their children. After all, a full-time worker making the minimum $5.25 an hour earns just $10,920 a year, nearly 20% below the federal poverty line for a family of three.

Last fall, Mystic residents arranged a meeting with competing candidates for state office from their district, and turned out 95 residents from the development to vote on Election Day – up from 25 in the 1996 vote. Meanwhile, N2N has organized large rallies in Worcester, Salem, and other cities; at one such "speak-out" on the Affordable Child Care for All Bill, Worcester public housing residents dumped hundreds of signed postcards in front of their state representatives. Their actions convinced legislators to support the bill, which would have guaranteed inexpensive, quality care for 13,000 families on a state waiting list.

Of course, even the best organizers can’t guarantee success overnight. While some aspects of the Working Family Agenda are finding approval in the Statehouse, bills are often watered-down in the process. Process is slow, though there seems to be grudging acceptance by many legislators that some actions are warranted. They are willing, for example, to admit that a mother often cannot work without access to affordable, quality child care. But the supply of openings in child care centers remains extremely limited, and the bill to eliminate the waiting list failed to survive 1998 budget cuts.

The DSA and resident organizers are motivated not just by the prospect of making change on the state level. Organizers are also helping build communities where they may not have existed or were weak, and are forming important coalitions between middle-class and low-income people.

"I don’t know any other groups that do this work door-to-door, sitting down with folks that have a very different socioeconomic situation from my own and doing common work with them," said David Thomas, a volunteer DSA organizer. "We’re going to the homes of people we wouldn’t see in any other context. Folks are interested in what you have to say and they’re not intimidated by the information. The stigma in society is that poor folks don’t care or are apathetic about politics. Our work debunks that."

David Holtzman

To get involved in the Working Family Agenda, contact Neighbor to Neighbor at (617) 354-2210 or Boston DSA at (617) 354-5078.