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The theme for the 31st National People's Action Conference is "NPA Strikes Again." And this is not referring to Star Wars "Return of the Jedi," but to one of America's favorite pastimes - bowling.

"Bowling?" you ask.

Yes, bowling.

Because in bowling you have a set of 10 pins you knock over to get a strike. And nothing beats a strike.

At NPA this year, we have 10 issues, the most ever represented at NPA. That includes the new issue of immigrant rights and connecting rural and urban enviromental problems across the country. Over the past few years, youth and parents have begun local and national campaigns from school construction and school safety to accessing scholarships to attend college. Other issues affecting our neighborhoods include day labor and temporary agencies abusing the rights of their workers to the lack of oversight and enforcement by the federal government to maintain quality job training centers for those people seeking a better standard of living. And then there are the issues that built NPA for over 30 years, the housing and banking issues. From the nasty loan sharks who continue to plague our neighborhoods, to the Department of Housing and Urban Development needing an NPA-kind of reminder to cut off bad lenders in our communities and finally, making sure that the Community Reinvestment Act still works for our communities.

And we are setting up the pins on all these issues, to get knocked down all in a row and all at once.

So far this year, NPA leaders have started plotting and planning at the 2002 NPA Leadership Conference with a record number of over 200 leaders from around the country. We also had our first NPA Leadership Summit, where over a 100 leaders went into Washington DC early to help set up the pins for this year's conference.

And at this year's NPA, we will be throwing the bowling ball down the lane. We will score strikes again and again until we win what we need for our communities. In other words, NPA will keep rolling the bowling ball into the crooks' asses until they clean up their act and work for the neighborhoods.

And that will never change.

Many outside people are testing the waters and whispering among themselves, all wanting to know if NPA is still strong after the passing of our fierce leader, Gale Cincotta.

Gale kept us focused and we thought of her as the glue of NPA. But one of Gale's main abilities was to teach us well. Just by watching her in action and working side-by-side with her, what Gale really accomplished was to train the rest of us to take up where she left off. She told us to keep kicking ass and knocking over the crooks. And that's what I look forward to every year at NPA.

In the beginning Gale was told that NPA wouldn't last a year. And we're still here 31 years later. I've been to 29 NPA conferences. I believe NPA will never die and I believe that with every breath of my body. We're training our youth to take the reigns as we move on in life.

This year we will be continuing the process that has been in place for over 30 years which includes: fighting for neighborhoods, keeping neighborhoods first and winning on issues in Washington, DC to take victories back into our neighborhoods.

Gale would be proud to know we're still knocking down the pins and scoring strikes over and over again.