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Community Coalition

CoCo trains activists and organizers in order to support power building with Black, Brown, Indigenous, and people of color.

THE PEOPLE'S STORIES
2023 DEBRA LEE COMMUNITY ORGANIZING FELLOWSHIP

Leadership

There has been considerable change in the field of community organizing over the past three decades that can help inform and strengthen local power building strategies. For three decades, Community Coalition (CoCo) has been a part of Los Angeles’ political and movement landscape. CoCo was founded intentionally as an African American and Latino organization that is intergenerational in all of its work. The organization has been at the forefront of efforts locally at the school board, city, county, state, and federal level to advance racial and economic justice.

CoCo has developed two generations of leaders, that include both youth and adult member residents of South Los Angeles. Our members have improved the physical environments of L.A’s highest needs schools, closed the achievement gap, and won numerous measures that are helping to change the material conditions in communities of color in South Central.

CoCo’s founder Mayor Karen Bass

Impact

Community Coalition centers the voices and leadership of people of color as we collectively work to upend systemic racism. The formation of our organization 30 years ago during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s is rooted in our deep commitment to racial justice. Founded intentionally as a Black/Brown organization, Community Coalition understands the power that lies in bringing people together and serving as part of a larger movement. We know firsthand that it is the people closest to the issues who know what is best for their communities.

As a grassroots organizing institution, we are accountable to the residents of South Los Angeles — one of the most impacted and under-resourced areas in the state and in the region — to galvanize their power to assert their leadership and to create the policies that will ensure stability, safety and liberation. It is because of this commitment that the South Los Angeles community has been a leader in groundbreaking campaigns to: transform our schools, reimagine and build a healthy environment, shape policy on kinship care and rebuild the social safety net to keep families together, cultivate homegrown leadership, build electoral power, and establish a permanent institution for social change.

Vision

In June 2019, in partnership with Community Change and Building Movement Project, CoCo held a convening where we gathered over 20 leaders of power-building groups from Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, Oregon, and Tennessee, in addition to partner organizations from California. The convening featured rich discussions and what we heard was: CoCo’s compelling history as it relates to organizing, campaign wins, and social justice is a story that needs to be shared.

Building on our 30-year history of galvanizing people and political power, Community Coalition has a vision to harness the power of activists and communities from across the nation in multi-racial organizing through our Center for Community Organizing (CCO). CoCo will train a cadre of activists and organizers dedicated to supporting local power building with people of color across the country. Elements of the CCO will include a national school for organizers, civic leadership training, a cross-city learning lab, an inside/outside strategy think tank, and an arts and cultural activism hub.

Donate

The activism of Community Coalition members and community residents has been a steadfast catalyst for aid in South LA for decades. Anything you’re able to give to CoCo right now would be appreciated in our continued efforts to improve the material conditions in South LA as we respond to the community’s needs during and after the Corona crisis. 

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