Program Participants
The Civic Leadership Institute has now been field tested as a tool for building regional power for community-labor coalitions in 6 cities. In some cases, the CLI has become a part of their ongoing organizing and leadership development strategy, with annual or bi-annual sessions for local grassroots leaders, community and labor organizers, and elected officials. Groups that have organized the rollout of a CLI in their communities are profiled below. Denver: Front Range Economic Strategy CenterThe Front Range Economic Strategy Center (FRESC) has been building, fueling, and sustaining a powerful movement for economic justice through a partnership between Colorado labor unions and the region's community-based organizations since 2002. Through a combined force of resident-led grassroots community organizing, coalition building, research, policy development, and public education, we seek to educate, organize, and empower the working families of Denver and the Front Range to hold governments and corporations accountable for responsible community-centered development, the creation of broad ramps to training and economic advancement for immigrants, communities of color, and women, and the protection of the health and welfare of all low-income workers and their families. Atlanta: Georgia STAND UPEstablished in 2004, Georgia Stand-Up is an alliance of community, academic, faith and labor organizations that promote smart growth strategies and economic justice through community-based research, education, and advocacy; by empowering community members and leaders to create and manifest the vision for their communities and make cohesive and decisive choices that directly influence their lives. In short, Georgia Stand-Up builds upon the rich resources that are found in the community-- creating an empowered community from the inside out. Georgia Stand-Up acts as a "think and act tank" for communities in Metro-Atlanta and throughout the Georgia region, addressing the growing need of low-wage communities in urban and non-urban areas; to build civic capacity and leadership from within their own neighborhoods, schools and religious institutions. Boston: Community Labor UnitedCommunity Labor United (CLU) is a partnership of organized labor and organized community groups formed to protect and promote the interests of low and middle-income working families in the Greater Boston area. CLU seeks to link the diverse network of community and labor organizations working within the Boston metropolitan region through a combined program of coalition building, research and policy development, public education, and grassroots mobilization. This long-term, strategic partnership will act proactively, mobilizing union and community bases to win concrete improvements and to build power for working families in the Greater Boston region. In short, over the next few years CLU aims to create a new political power center in the Greater Boston region, one that directly competes with the existing strength of the corporate community. New Haven and Hartford: Connecticut Center for a New EconomyThe Connecticut Center for a New Economy (CCNE) is organizing a broad-based social movement to create systemic economic and social change for the working poor. Using New Haven as a model for the state of Connecticut, we are forging a new social contract for ordinary working people in the new service economy. CCNE's experience over the past six years has demonstrated that the challenges faced by these groups are not separate but deeply integrated. We recognize the fact that the struggle for good jobs where workers have a real voice on the job, affordable housing, public education, affordable health care, immigrant rights on the one hand, and crime, overcrowded prisons, and violence on the other are facets of a common struggle. They are inextricably linked. Milwaukee: The Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods Coalition
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