This speech was presented at the CCC 40th Anniversary Gala on May 5, 2008

...The motto of CCC is “The Power of Many.”  This institution is the product of collective work by thousands of people over four decades.  I’d like to ask every current or former CCC staff person and board member to stand up.  Thank you and stay standing.  I’d like everyone who is a community organizer or grassroots leader to stand up.  Thank you and stay standing.  I’d like the allies of the Center in colleague organizations in the union movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and advocacy organizations who push every day for more just public policy here in Washington, D.C. and around the country to stand up.  And, I’d like everyone who puts their wallet where their heart is by contributing to CCC and grassroots organizations to stand up.  Let’s give each other a rousing round of applause for a remarkable history and a bright future.  Thank you!

Brothers and sisters, we are living at a pivotal moment in history.  The Center was born 40 years ago at a time of great hope, with a strong national commitment to reducing poverty and ending racial injustice that was itself born out of the work and struggle of millions of people.  Over the last 40 years, we have seen a halt to that progress, and a retreat from those commitments.  We have seen the rise of a view of the world that says we are on our own, that there is no role for government, that we don’t owe each other anything, and that we should live in fear of our neighbors. 

This ideological fever may be breaking, on the shameful failure of our government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, on the realities of increasing poverty, greater inequality, and growing disgust with the politics of division and hate.  And there are many reasons to be hopeful.  Grassroots community groups are growing –and winning impressive victories in jobs and health care and housing and schools.  We had a taste of the possibilities for change when millions of immigrants and their allies took to the streets just about two years ago, thanks in large part to many of the organizers and leaders and CCC staff I see here today.  Young people, like those who participate in our Generation Change program to train, recruit and mentor a new generation of social change troublemakers, are bringing ideas and energy into social change work.  One way or another, we WILL have regime change in Washington, D.C. and that will create opportunities to break with the misguided policies of the last 8 years.

Taken together, these changes could create a once in a life time opportunity to change the course of history.  Health care for all, good jobs and economy of shared prosperity, quality public education, more affordable housing, humane and just immigration policies, restoration of civil liberties and civil rights enforcement, environmental protection, and end to poverty, the right of workers to organize, a new role and new image for our country in the world – all of these are not just dreams, they are real possibilities.

The Center for Community Change has a critical role to play in this moment.  We have built a national Campaign for Community Values that brings together hundreds of grassroots groups across lines of geography, issue and race to advance a new vision of what our country could be as a beloved community, and specific policies that reflect those commitments.  We launched this campaign with the Heartland Presidential Forum in Iowa which brought 4000 grassroots leaders from around the country together for a dialogue with five Presidential candidates.  We will mobilize half a million voters this year, and hold events around the country like the Heartland Forum to ensure that the issues and concerns of low-income people are heard in this critical election year.  And, we are already working with our allies to prepare ambitious campaigns to win real policy changes on health care, immigration, jobs and poverty, and more in 2009 and beyond. 

As important as the specific issues and policies and campaigns we are working to achieve is the deeper shift we are seeking to make -- away from greed, selfishness and the your own your own mentality that has given us more inequality, violence and racial separation to a view that we are all connected, that we share responsibility for one another, that our fates are as Martin Luther King put it “inextricably linked in a garment of destiny.”  Such a shift in our culture and way of being will be critical to meet the great challenges of our time. 

The Center’s critical role in all of this is as a bridge: between the lived experience at the grassroots level and public policy in Washington, connecting grassroots groups and to each other to achieve more power and unity, between low-income people and the allies they need to see change that will benefit all of us.  Through 40 years of CCC’s history, there has been a lot of change: in program, strategy, staff and board.  But one thing has never changed, and that is our conviction that it is only through the leadership of those most affected by injustice that change is possible –that change comes from the bottom up, that organizing is the critical ingredient.  This is how change was brought about 40 years ago when the Center was born, and that is how we will change the world together today and tomorrow and for the next 40 years.  As we emerge from dark times, and as we consider what a could be a critical pivot point in the history of our country, we come together not only to celebrate the last 40 years of CCC but to commit ourselves with a deep sense of moral purpose to the struggle for justice ahead of us.

History is in our hands.  Let’s go make it.

Thank you very much.

Deepak Bhargava is the executive director of the Center for Community Change.