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When introducing people into NPA and our own special brand of community organizing we have been bringing out the videotape from the 2000 NPA annual conference. And within the video there is one riveting moment featuring Claire McGrath, a veteran leader from Syracuse United Neighbors that always catches my attention. McGrath, speaking as a part of the leadership panel during a banking workshop addresses the audience: "I suppose you have noticed some large screws on your chairs... now put them in your hands and hold them up and show them to the federal banking regulators, who are sitting next to me."

At that moment, McGrath is shown holding up several nine inch silver plated screws for the crowd to see and is heard telling the regulators, "These screws represent how neighborhood people got screwed when Congress passed the recent Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the so-called 'banking reform bill, which gave the banks new power to get bigger, expand and move further away from our neighborhoods." "Now," she continues, "let's all of us tell the regulators that 'we're tired of being screwed!'"

The audience then picks up the chant and it swells to a roar in the crowded room. This moment provided me with the insight that the hardware of our type of organizing also includes screws in addition to 'nuts and bolts', which is the subtitle of our 1985 publication - Basics Of Organizing. Our issue organizing is about turning the screws. Turning the screws for the organizer means producing torque. "Torqueing" down screws means risking getting blisters on the palms of your hands as the screwdriver is turned yet another time to drive the screw into the wood. Turning the screws for the organizer means hard work and no half-ass effort.

It means concentration in keeping the head of the screwdriver in the screw head slot. It means groaning and grunting - working up a sweat and sometimes swearing to nudge the screw one more turn. The work of turning screws is not sexy, highly visible or glamorous. In 1997 NPA hit the home of General Barry McCaffrey, the drug czar. The next day we took over and shut down his office, which is adjacent to the White House. Later that day an NPA leadership delegation met with high-ranking officials from McCaffrey's office. At that time, we wanted him to come out to some of our cities to observe the reality of drug dealing in our neighborhoods and determine what we needed from his office to fight the tide of drug dealing.

His office said that they needed more information. We gave it to them. Then they said that they had other pressing priorities, such as looking at spy satellite photos and going to Mexico and didn't have enough money to travel to our cities. We offered to buy him a plane ticket. We had countless phone calls and fax transactions, along with letters sent by mail with various deputies in McCaffrey's office know formally as the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

We turned the screws. Finally the Drug Czar's office dug up someone to go to Cincinnati and meet with Communities United For Action, which proved to be a disaster as this representative did not know what was going on and had very little power. NPA did not give up and we turned the screws again. Finally, the right hand man to General McCaffrey, James McDonough attended neighborhood organization meetings in the Bronx, NY and Hartford, CT. McCaffrey and McDonough are long gone, but NPA is still turning the screws.

NPA turned the screws and did the same thing with HUD Secretaries starting back to George Romney in the early seventies to the recently appointed Mel Martinez. NPA is hearing the same type of bureaucratic sing-song from the national offices of the Federal Trade Commission, about their promise to do local hearings on predatory lending. It seems that the big boss now has "resource issues." We told the FTC that our neighborhoods have families facing resource issues as well - such as foreclosure - and NPA will keep turning the screws with these guys to get their dainty feet out of DC and into the 'hood.

Turning the screws also happens locally with many neighborhood groups twisting their own screwdrivers on issues ranging from predatory lending, neighborhood safety to immigrants rights. If you are doing our type of neighborhood organizing, turning the screws comes with the territory. If you do not pick up the screwdriver and turn the screws, you will become one of the "screwed."