By
Jaci Feldman
Special
Projects Director
National
Training and Information Center
Special Contribution
Fifteen years ago, community groups from all over the country teamed
up with each other and the Department of Justice to organize around
crime and drugs. Since then, over 95 grassroots organizations have
been funded by millions of dollars to create a team of leaders and
organizations that go after the violence ravaging their neighborhoods.
But these partnerships didn’t come out of nowhere. In fact,
in true NPA style, they were fought for with blood, sweat and tears…
and a couple of hits.
I was working at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association in Chicago
when Shel Trapp (National Training and Information Center’s
founding director) asked me if I would be willing to staff the Neighborhood
Safety Workshop at the National People’s Action 17th annual
conference. He told me, “Everyone is saying crime and drugs
is the number one issue in their community.”
I started my quest to find the cut on the crime and drug issue by
calling groups like Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Union
Miles Development Corporation, Hartford Areas Rally Together and
Communities United for Action to find out the problems with organizing
around crime and drugs. They all said the same thing, “Our
biggest problems is that we have no money to hire staff. Funders
see working on crime or drugs useless and refuse to fund it.”
I recognized the problem and through my research I learned that
the Department of Justice (DOJ) had the weapon they felt would stop
crime and substance abuse in our communities. That secret weapon
was a life size dog name McGruff – the Crime Dog, who was
housed at the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC). McGruff
was living high – he was being funded $10 million to “fight
the war on drugs” while communities were lucky to get a bone.
NPA invited Charlie Smith, director of Bureau of Justice Assistance
in the DOJ to the NPA Conference to tell him we wanted some of that
$10 million. Smith sent a representative who was presented with
hundreds of Milk Bone Dog Biscuits. He then told NPA leaders “you
know where you can shove those bones.” I think he had a different
idea then us, but to NPA leaders that was his personal invitation
for us to visit their offices.
On a Monday morning, hundreds of NPA leaders stormed Smith's office.
After about 20 minutes of negotiations with Mr. Smith he finally
agreed to meet with 15 of our leaders. The meeting lasted about
45 minutes – which ended with them agreeing to meet with us
again in 60 days. We were told to wait in the lobby as they prepared
the letter laying out their commitment. This took over six hours
to get a two-line letter that said, “in light of today’s
action we agree to meet again with the NPA on June 15, 1988.”
Over the next two months, the Justice Department was in contact
with me and wanted to tour two of NPA’s neighborhoods before
our next meeting. They visited Cleveland and Chicago and told us
they were impressed with what they were seeing. What they saw on
the tours was community groups and law enforcement working together
- a relationship based on groups' successful organizing.
On June 15, which also was my first official day working for the
National Training and Information Center, eight leaders including:
Brenda La Blanc, Inez Killingsworth, Delma De La Rosa and the late
Otto McMath met with BJA and NCPC representatives. The meeting began
with Smith announcing that BJA would set aside $500,000 for a new
partnership between BJA, NTIC and NCPC. The first project was called
“Community Responses to Drug Abuse” and it ran from
1988 – 1990.
During the first project, we learned how NCPC got the $10 million
a year for their project- it came from what is called an “earmark,”
where Congress decides what should be funded, at what amount and
writes it into the annual budget.
NTIC decided to approach Congress because we wanted to see this
project continued. In 1990, NTIC received its first “soft
earmark” which meant we would be funded - but only with left
over money. With that our next project was launched: Communities
in Action to Prevent Drug Abuse I (1991- 1994) followed by Communities
in Action to Prevent Drug Abuse II adding a new partner the US Department
of Labor (1994 – 1997) and Project Grand (1998 to 1999). Congressional
soft earmarks funded all of these programs.
We then set out to get a hard earmark from money set aside in the
federal budget. The first thing we learned was that those that got
a hard earmark had teams of trained lobbyists meeting with members
of Congress. They were paying these lobbyists up to $100,000 (something
we could never afford). But it did occur to us that we were a training
center; we have people. Why don’t we train our own teams?
So our first group of 30 community leaders hit Capitol Hill during
the summer of 1999 determined to get a hard earmark for community
organizations to work on neighborhood safety issues.
In December of that year we learned we were successful and received
our first hard earmark. Congress allocated $1 million dollars -
no more bones or leftovers for our groups. That new project was
called the Community Justice Empowerment Project (2000 –2003).
We have just again received an earmark and will soon be kicking
off our latest project - the National and Secure Neighborhoods Program.
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