The energy at “Realizing the Promise” was palpable.

More than 2,500 community leaders and organizers - including top Obama transition leaders - came together in Washington DC, last week for the forum on community, faith and democracy. The event was hosted by the Center for Community Change and the Gamaliel Foundation, and cosponsored by a number of organizations, including PolicyLink.

As part of this democracy day: 400+ people marched to reform health-care; 500+ people joined in a press conference on immigration reform; and 700+ people held 178 legislative visits with their senators and representatives voicing their needs.  All in one morning!

One after another, leaders of community organizations from across the country stood at the podium and spoke of their hopes for their communities.   Over and over, people talked about the need for jobs, comprehensive immigration reform, the right to organize, and health-care reform.

Then two roundtable discussions were moderated by award-winning journalist, Juan Williams.  The first focused on A People’s Perspective of the Economic Crisis and the second on Democracy in the New America.  Notably, Melody Barnes, Director of Domestic Policy Council for President-Elect Obama was on the panel, with luminaries like Manuel Pastor, a leading expert on environmental policy and regional equity at University of Southern California, Joseph Hansen from United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), and Maria Socorro Pesqueira of Mujeres Latinas en Accion.

These are the people who make our democracy real -the people who organize community voices and find ways to insert community needs into the often esoteric political processes which shapes our lives.

The forum ended with closing address by Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Project and White House Senior Advisor.

Ms. Jarrett ended her talk with one simple question -”are you fired up?” The roar in response made the answer — and the promise — perfectly clear.

Check out the Realizing the Promise intro video below and visit the conference site for more info on how to get involved:

In today’s editions of La Opinion — the nation’s largest Spanish-language newspaper — PolicyLink CEO stands up for ACORN against the withering assault of right-wing critics. Though Ms. Blackwell’s op-ed was published in Spanish, here is the English version:

Why ACORN Matters

By Angela Glover Blackwell

On door steps and street corners across the nation, thousands of ACORN volunteers have been working diligently to enfranchise and empower millions of Americans from low-income communities and communities of color. We’ve seen them registering our Latino and African-American neighbors in dense urban centers, far-flung rural towns and everywhere in between - fighting to give a voice to our historically marginalized communities.

In just the past year, Latinos represented about one-quarter of the 1.3 million new voters ACORN registered - more than 300,000 new American voters. That is why the unwarranted and unsubstantiated attacks on ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) the past few weeks have been so damaging to anyone who wants communities of color to have a say in our government.

The work being done by ACORN and Latino voter rights groups is an enormous and important step toward giving Latinos and African Americans the voice we need and deserve.  When our numbers are strong, we have the power to make changes– in our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our nation.

But it is exactly this empowerment that is driving the trumped-up voter registration fraud charges being repeated ad nauseam by right-wing pundits and sympathetic media outlets like FOX News.  It threatens to undue the work of ACORN, Latino, African American, and other organizations across the country working for decades to secure and protect the right to vote for all Americans.

Entrenched powers are uncomfortable with the voters ACORN targets. Those powers are fearful of the nation’s rapidly expanding Latino population and the country’s inevitable march toward a day when the majority of Americans come from racial minority groups.

It is the fear of the powerless becoming powerful, of the voiceless finding their voice. It is the fear of 148,000 new ACORN-recruited voters in Pennsylvania, 152,000 in Florida, 217,000 in Michigan, and 238,000 in Ohio. It is the fear that people of color across America will finally be able to speak out on behalf of their communities.

But the work of ACORN and other civil rights groups does not stop at the ballot box. The struggle continues in every corner of our lives, from health to housing to criminal justice reform.

ACORN was one of the first and most vocal groups calling for reform of the predatory lending and subprime mortgage laws, long before those sectors dragged our economy down into crisis. In New Orleans, ACORN brought together thousands of displaced residents to give them an amplified, powerful voice in the revival of their own city. Throughout the nation, ACORN has organized millions of red-shirted supporters to crowd City Council meetings and legislative hearings to fight for fair, equitable public policies for all people.

At heart, ACORN is working to ensure all our children have good schools, all our neighborhoods are affordable and healthy, and all our families are economically secure. But we can only make our dreams real if we join together as a powerful force for change.

ACORN plays a vital role in making sure our communities have a seat at the table to advocate forcefully for that change. They deserve our utmost respect and support - not the scorn and derision of ill-informed politicians.

Ms. Blackwell is founder and CEO of PolicyLink

In recent days, the name “ACORN” has become a sinister watchword in many conservative circles, serving as a stand-in for voter fraud and underhanded election tactics. One leading politician even said ACORN “may be destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Well, let me tell you about the ACORN I know, the ACORN I’ve seen in action during my more than three years working with people struggling to recover in New Orleans.

ACORN is the group that brought together thousands of African American residents to have an amplified, powerful voice in the revival of their own city.

ACORN is the group that fought to make sure Louisianans displaced from their home state would still have the chance to vote in their elections and help guide post-Katrina recovery.

ACORN is the group that holds politicians at all levels accountable to a poor, largely African American constituency that was systematically ignored and even targeted for housing demolition.

ACORN is the group that has been one of the most effective organizations in holding banks accountable for the predatory loans that are now bringing our entire economy down.

ACORN is not a caricature.

ACORN is not a curse word.

ACORN, at heart, is a group of neighbors fighting to spread the American Dream to all people.   That role seems pretty vital to the fabric of democracy.

PolicyLink Senior Director Kalima Rose is a long-time community advocate and policy expert who has been working with legislators and on-the-ground leaders in Louisiana since just after Hurricane Katrina.

This has been a lively discussion about community organizers and why they matter.  I thought I would add a story to showcase the role of organizers, the different kinds of impacts they have, and the different kinds of people who end-up as organizers.  I’m hoping that others will add their own stories, so we can underscore how deep and wide the culture of organizing is, and how many different kinds of people are organizing in communities, large and small, across the country.  Here’s the story-from rural California, north of Sacramento…

The Wal-Mart in Anderson, Calif., may look like any other. But thanks to community organizers, several check-out lanes are now lined with healthy snacks - trail mix, granola bars, dried cranberries, diced peaches, and animal crackers - instead of the junk food that normally populates the impulse-buy aisle.

The organizers responsible for this progress probably don’t fit the harsh stereotypes of the profession we’ve been hearing about recently. They’re just regular neighborhood students - part of Kids Make A Stand, a project to promote healthy eating in Shasta County.

The students made a pretty compelling case to store manager Tim Trimble that the healthy snacks would help develop their bodies and minds.

“They put me on the spot in a big way, but in a good way,” Trimble told the Redding Record-Searchlight newspaper.

The students designed the “Kids Healthy Choices” stands in two check-out aisles and hoped people would respond. The reaction has been phenomenal. Since the project began, sales of the healthy snacks have doubled.

The kids of Anderson continue organizing for positive change. They’ve made presentations to the managers of the Wal-Mart stores in Redding and Red Bluff, who are replicating the healthy food aisles in their own stores. The also plan to lobby the Anderson City Council for an ordinance to have healthy food sections in every store in the area.

Kids Make A Stand is a project of the South Shasta Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC) initiative. HEAC is a four-year, $26-million initiative to combat childhood obesity, spearheaded by The California Endowment. The project increases opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating throughout California and develops policies to reduce the risk factors for diabetes and obesity.

Kids Make A Stand is one of many efforts Shasta County HEAC has undertaken, and one of several that show the power of young people when they’re organized and focused on making change. In another example, young people’s organized efforts helped convince the City of Anderson to install sidewalks along the road to a skate park and pressed the Anderson parks director to refurbish park restrooms and replace basketball nets. They have helped farmers in unincorporated Happy Valley create a trail map to encourage purchase of local produce and to preserve agriculture in the community. Farmers report an increase in visits to their farms.

These projects are making a big difference in the area.  It’s the organizers and those who participate that make the difference.

“HEAC is becoming part of the psyche of this community,” says Sheryl Vietti of Shasta County Public Health, a partner in the Shasta County HEAC project. “There’s a growing awareness that people care about healthy eating and physical activity. And the community has been receptive and responsive to all of our efforts.”

Please share your stories of successful organizing in the comments.

Judith Bell is president of PolicyLink and an experienced organizer for policy change.

Photo of Kids Make A Stand students by Michael Woodward, reporter, Anderson Valley Post. From left to right, Jonni Hinton, Emily LaFayette, Ally LaFayette, James LaRiza and Rebecca LaRiza.

This week, we’ve heard a lot of mocking of community organizers. Former New York Gov. George Pataki even took time to ask, “What in God’s name is a community organizer?”

Well, governor, I’ll tell you.

Community organizers are the ones who fill in the cracks left behind by government and the private sector. They are the ones who helped regular people change their block, their neighborhood, their city, even their country. They are the ones who are there to stop absent landlords, rally for new parks or hold crooked politicians accountable. They are the ones who are needed most by those most in need.

Without community organizers, we wouldn’t have had the civil rights movement. Without community organizers, we wouldn’t have even the most basic labor protections. Without community organizers, parents wouldn’t have the power to make sure their kids’ school was up to snuff.

There are many kinds of experience we need in our political leaders. To dismiss the hard, vital work of community organizers is an insult to everyone who has ever carried a picket sign, spoken out for justice or rallied for a better, more just world.