Does any good come out of the Center for Community Change?

The Center for Community Change (CCC) was created to provide technical assistance to various local community organizations but, under the leadership of former ACORN organizer Deepak Bhargava, it has become a “political machine” – that is, according to author Heidi Swartz, it “has begun to amalgamate organizations’ local capacity in nationally coordinated campaigns.”

Not surprisingly, a number of the Alinskyian organizing networks are plugged in to the work of CCC. ACORN, the Gamaliel Foundation and various Gamaliel affiliates consider themselves to be CCC “partners.” PICO and Interfaith Worker Justice have worked with the Gamaliel and CCC on specific issues and several local PICO affiliates are CCC “partners,” as are several locals of the Industrial Areas Foundation .

Faith-based members of the Alinskyian organizing networks will therefore be interested to learn that they are now supporting a new piece of legislation, the Local Jobs for America Act (HR 4812), for which CCC and its partner organizations are aggressively campaigning.

Supporters – and these include the big guns, the unions and all the usual progressive political organizations – see the bill as creating a sort of contemporary Works Progress Administration (WPA) response to the current economic crisis. One petition states, “Millions of Americans are out of work at the same time that our local governments are struggling to provide basic services. Crumbling roads, failing schools, un-policed streets and record unemployment are the result.” Just as Roosevelt “solved this problem during the great depression” through the WPA, passage of the Local Jobs for America Act, it says, would put “America back to work and build our infrastructure.”

According to CCC promotional material, “the Act includes $75 billion for a Local Community Jobs Program, $23 billion to create or retain jobs in education, and funding for law enforcement officers, firefighters, and private sector on-the-job training. …The Local Community Jobs Program would provide federal assistance to states and localities to directly create jobs that meet crucial community needs and retain existing public workers in the face of crushing budget crises. By directly funding 750,000 jobs over two years, the Program would immediately reduce unemployment, ensure that cities and towns across the country can maintain critical services, boost local economies, and help rebuild our communities.”

But is it a good bill?

Critics are referring to it as the government “bailout” for government employees and union jobs. The New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition, a spunky grassroots alliance of home schoolers and assorted citizens’ groups, writes: “We all know how the stimulus bill worked out. We were supposed to see the creation of millions of shovel-ready jobs. The reality is, we have not seen one private sector job created…In a summary provided by the House Committee on Education and Labor, this specialized and narrowly focused bill which has no pay-as-you-go restrictions in Congress on its $75 billion price tag, is supposed to create one million jobs, support and maintain public sector jobs, help community organizations (ACORN?) and all without raising taxes. But the terms solidly indicate that mostly union jobs will be supported and maintained; no job creation is actually included in the bill, just job training.”

Doug Powers, posted on Michelle Malkin’s blog, writes cynically about the proposed legislation, “The ‘Recovery Act’ stimulus sham gave $100 billion to school districts in part to allegedly ‘save teachers jobs,’ but a year later the stimulus has worked so well that they’re going back to the trough for more. …Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent Democratic lawmakers a request Thursday to pass a $26 billion emergency supplemental to fund up to 300,000 teachers’ jobs that he says will otherwise be lost in the fall.” [“Another Day, another Bailout Request,” 5-14-10, michellemalkin.com/2010/05/14/another-day-another-bailout]

The contrast between the bill’s supporters and its detractors gives a David and Goliath feeling to the situation. The stone David, in this case, ought to be throwing is obvious: get the Alinskyian organizations out of the churches.

Stephanie Block is the publisher of the New Mexico-based Los Pequenos newspaper and a founder of the Catholic Media Coalition.