Centro CSO
Community Service Organization
511 Echandia Street
Los Angeles, CA 90033 (323) 221-4000

Brief History

The Community Service Organization has been organizing and serving the Boyle Heights community since 1947. In our early years we were involved in organizing for immigrants rights, against police brutality, leadership training and voter participation. We won early victories in the Bloody Christmas police abuse case in 1952 at the old Lincoln Heights city jail portrayed in the movie LA Confidential and the election to the LA City council of one of our early leaders Edward Roybal in 1953. Early organizers include Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez and Tony Rios. Many of today's political and community leaders worked or were trained at the CSO. Over time we became more involved in providing social services such as legalization counseling, alcohol counseling, literacy and the establishment of our own credit union. At the end of the 1990s, CSO faced a number of difficulties and dissolved most these social service programs and focused on internal issues, reorganization and purpose.

The New Centro CSO

The Centro CSO remains dedicated to grassroots community organizing and the training of a new generation of poor and working class organizers. This focus has enabled CSO to survive many years, giving us a stable base of members and supporters in the community. With the opening of our new community center in the heart of Boyle Heights in the summer of 2000, we launched the organization into a new period. Since that time, our success can be measured by our ability to incorporate new members and prepare new leaders to fight for the democratic rights of all poor working people. We are especially proud of our accomplishments considering we have been building our strength without making use of politicians and their government funding by taking the struggle to the streets.

Following our successful organizing against Proposition 21 last year, early this year we began our "Clean Schools Campaign." A December 2000 organizers training for new and old members foretold this, youth and mothers, conducted by Alfredo De Avila from the Center for Third World Organizing. Through several house meetings and weekly neighborhood walks, the parents identified school conditions as the issue they most wanted changed in our neighborhood. It did not require much investigation but after visiting over a half-dozen elementary schools in Boyle Heights, we targeted the leaky, smelly, ugly and rusted trash bins. (We could have focused on the bathrooms, lack of books or other problems in the schools.) The students know all too well how evaporating milk stains the asphalt they play on during recess and lunch, how the flies flew around, on and over the cans because they had no lids, and how obstructing the play area, the cans were a threat to their health. We posted over a dozen of the eye-soring trash bin photos in front of our office (where many people stopped to look at while walking by) and reproduced hundreds of color fliers to take out into the neighborhood to show the parents and community how inadequate resources were being placed into our schools. The first to respond were the neighbors who lived across the street from the schools. In time, we identified parents who wanted to be more involved with their children's education but were formerly shunned by the school administration. It is with these parents and community members that we formed the nucleus of our education organizing committee.

After organizing several community meetings with the LAUSD the facilities operations of the LAUSD agreed to replace the trashcans, install a sewer drainage system and build a concrete walled area around the trash bins at a cost of $15,000. In August, the trashcans were replaced at Bridge Street Elementary and at most of the other schools in Boyle Heights at the same time as well. Construction was completed in September of 2001 and is seen as a big victory for the community and Centro CSO.

STRUCTURE

The Community Service Organization starts with its membership base. There are five members who serve on the Board of Directors. We currently do not have any staff community organizers and are entirely volunteer run. The Education Committee is led by a core group of 15 people and leads the campaigns selected by the membership. Our core leadership reflects the constituency/community we work with. The organizational structure is captured in the chart above. Our decision-making process is collective and open. All of our meetings are open; we strive for a consensus of opinion but respect differences of opinion throughout the organization.

The entire organization is dedicated to the development of leadership within the community. We believe this is essential if we are to live up to our mission. The Board of Directors role in this development is more than just to establish policy and guidelines but to work actively with new members in committees, encourage and support individual members to accept manageable projects to develop their leadership abilities, and organize formal training sessions open to all members of the organization and the neighborhood community we organize in. Staff supports the initiative of the board and participate in as many training opportunities as possible.

HOW COMMUNITY IS INVOLVED

The Boyle Heights community is primarily Mexican/Chicano with some Asian (mostly Filipino and Japanese American), Central American and African American residents. The community is poor working class and mostly newer immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The community and membership are involved in all phases of the decision-making process. For example, in our current campaign to improve school conditions we use several methods to involve and get input from the diverse community. We use surveys we conducted at schools, from door-to-door knocking on Saturday mornings, and at community and member meetings. The survey is part of our outreach plan and is used to get people involved in the campaign and to join the organization. We also gather specific information on the current problems with school conditions and attempt to validate our initial research findings on school conditions.

People are recruited to community meetings to discuss the problems collectively and reach consensus on what problems we need to work on. The same community meetings decide on what specific actions need to take place and then a general action plan is developed and agreed upon. We facilitate these activities to ensure that immigrants, working class women, African Americans, Asian Americans and Central Americans are part of the decision-making process with the rest of the Mexican/Chicano community. We also hold regular board meetings to plan operational and administrative work and all members are involved and encouraged to participate. Special events such as our March International Women's community celebration have been organized by our young Mujeres and included local women artists, singers and poets.

Our presence in the community is well known. The community and teachers seek our help and advice on various issues. (In 2001 we provided support for a reassigned Sheridan Elementary schoolteacher.) We are asked and invited to participate in many community events, coalitions and issues. For example, we were part of and helped organize the ELA Coalition Against Proposition 21, the Feria de Salud at Prospect Park on April 28th, 2001, and the annual Feria de Los Ninos at Hollenbeck Park in May.

In our work the Community Service Organization has found it important to state upfront that we believe very strongly in the political and social equality of women, the GLBT community, the physically challenged and all people of color. As a civil/human rights organization, we went on record opposing Propositions 184, 187, 209 and 21. All persons who believe in our mission are encouraged to become members.

This past March 2001 CSO held a Dia de la Mujer (Women's Day) Event to honor the leadership role women play day-to-day in the movement. At CSO, we have a literature table in the front of the office where we place and invite literature about their organizations and community issues such as HIV and domestic violence. CSO shows through our coalition work and co-sponsorship of community events our opposition to discrimination and support of equality.

DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES

Boyle Heights has a long history of resistance against intolerance and injustice. The community is the victim of bad housing, health, and environmental and educational conditions. Centro CSO is connecting the strengths that lie in the neighborhood to do something about improving the neighborhood.

In Boyle Heights, the schools are overcrowded, old and in poor condition. Students have lower reading and math levels and higher drop out rates than the more affluent schools. In general, the school buildings, grounds and other facilities are in need of repair or reconstruction. The purpose of CSO organizing is to improve these poor conditions by targeting them with a campaign.

In March of 2001 we initiated a new campaign to improve school conditions in Boyle Heights specifically the dirty smelling large trash cans in play areas, dirty student restrooms, and broken asphalt on playgrounds. Our strategy is to organize a grassroots campaign of community people to pressure the LAUSD school operations to clean and improve facilities. The campaign involves outreach and surveys in the community to recruit and involve the community in the planning and decision-making process of the campaign. This new campaign recruited and trained new organizers like mothers and school-aged youth by their involvement and leadership in winning a concrete victory on a problem that they have identified and agree need a solution. This specific campaign (large trashcans) started in February and concluded in November 2001.

The Centro CSO was established to increase awareness of issues important to poor working class communities and to fight discrimination against Mexican Americans immigrants and other people of color. The purpose of the Centro CSO is to:

Guard and further democratic rights,

Become more aware of our responsibilities as citizens,

Coordinate efforts for the common good of the community,

Encourage participation in civic life.

Improve relations among all nationalities and religions.