How RAC-CA Can Contribute to the Progressive Movement Winning Governing Power in California in Thirty Years

By Lee Winkelman

November 1, 2024[1]

Originally written for the P3 Organizing Seminar2023-24[2]

  1. Introduction

The California Progressive Movement has made significant progress since the 1990s, winning a level of contested power that would have been almost imaginable then. But the California Progressive Movement is also far from winning governing power, where it can consistently win progressive policies and create narratives that can become widespread shared common sense.

This first section of this paper will briefly sketch out where the California Progressive Movement is now and where it needs to go to win governing power over the next thirty years. I will discuss the need for the progressive movement to unite around a thirty-year vision of winning power, develop stronger narratives that challenge the conventional wisdom, and take up strategies that split the corporate sector that opposes much of the progressive agenda.

The second section will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of RAC-CA and what this Jewish organizing group can contribute to the California Progressive Movement’s thirty-year project of building governing power. I will discuss the need for RAC-CA to partner more closely with another group so we can focus our time on building a larger base of people in middle- to upper-middle class communities where progressive coalitions are not strongest; more systematically developing and mobilizing our base of “influencers;” and creating and testing out narratives that reflect progressive values of abundance, connection and hope and challenge dominant narratives of scarcity, isolation and fear.

Finally, the paper will conclude with a proposed housing campaign that combines traditional progressive housing demands – tenant protections, money for affordable housing, and alternative models of housing – with changes in zoning and other regulations to allow the building of millions of units of market rate housing. This new housing campaign will demonstrate how the Progressive Movement can move forward in California with RAC-CA contributing to that advancement.

  1. How the California Progressive Movement Can Go from Contested to Governing Power.

Despite its liberal reputation today, up until the 1990s California politics were conservative and xenophobic.  Two conservative Republican presidents, Nixon and Reagan, came from California.  Governor Pete Wilson’s term as governor from 1991-1999 was marked by racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. In the 1980s and 1990s, voters passed a series of anti-immigrant, anti-BIPOC ballot measures including measures to make English California’s official language (1989), ban public education and public services for many immigrants (1994), repeal public affirmative action programs (1996), outlaw bilingual education (1998), and toughen criminal sentencing for adults and juveniles (1994, 2000).  The rightwing ballot measure with the most impact on California politics was Proposition 13, which passed in 1978, limiting property taxes and making it harder to pass new taxes. California has been revenue-starved ever since.

The turning point for the progressive movement in California came in 1992 when organizers across the state, but particularly in Los Angeles, got together and planned to build power to change the politics of California.[3]  The progressive movement has come a long way since then:

  • A revitalized labor movement has become one of the most powerful forces in California politics
  • Non-labor organizing groups have built to scale, networking local groups in statewide networks and coalitions that can act effectively at the statewide level
  • Labor and community groups have become very good at sophisticated voter turnout operations and because of this work, the electorate has become closer to the general population, with more young, BIPOC and low-income people voting.
  • Labor and community groups come together to run and often win statewide campaigns for progressive legislation and ballot measures.
  • Democrats control all statewide offices and a supermajority of both branches of the state legislature.

The progressive movement is currently able to contest for power. We can win on certain issues, but the progressive movement does not have “governing power,” defined by Dan McGrath and Harmony Goldberg as “the ability to win and sustain power within multiple arenas of decision-making so as to shift the power structure of governance and establish a new common sense of governing.”[4] Occasional victories and losses are indicative of contesting for power, where the progressive movement currently is in California. Consistent ability to win an agenda is consistent with governing power, where the California progressive movement needs to get to.

Currently, the California progressive movement has a dominant story about how diversity strengthens California. This story is widely accepted, and it leads to strong support for immigrant rights, civil rights, women’s issues (including abortion rights) and LGBT rights. But on other issues, the California progressive movement does not have a strong, widely accepted narrative that counters the more conservative narrative of fear and scarcity that leads many people to support conservative policies out of concern about crime, taxes, rising costs, and threats to property values. The California progressive movement does not have a strong, widely shared narrative that counters people’s perceived economic self-interest leading to policies based on people’s NIMBY sentiments and fear of crime.

To move from contested to governing power, the progressive movement needs to do several things.

  1. Develop a widely shared thirty-year vision strategy and plan for winning governing power. The most sophisticated labor unions and statewide, multi-issue networks come together on common campaigns and win victories, but they do not yet have a shared long-term vision and strategy. The Democrats have a supermajority in the legislature, but the Democratic Party is effectively split into two – a moderate, pro-corporate caucus and a progressive caucus – that often clash on issues and votes. There are many local and statewide single-issue groups, in issues like housing, climate, and criminal justice reform, that do not come together in a common strategy.[5]  These diverse progressive actors – labor, politicians, and non-labor organizing groups – need to develop a common thirty-year vision, strategy and plan for winning governing power. The Million Voters Project[6] and other groups like Catalyst California have taken positive steps to develop a common long-term strategy among the groups involved, but this effort needs to be expanded to include labor unions and other groups that make up the progressive movement. There needs to be an Increased strategic, rather than just tactical, coordination among labor unions, community groups progressive politicians and other progressive organizations. We need collaboration that goes beyond a single campaign but is focused on the thirty-year project of building governing power. Progressive groups in California should understand and pursue their unique role within the larger movement effort to win governing power.
  • Improve narrative work. There are already strong, widely accepted narratives in California about diversity and equity, and these narratives have led to significant policies that support LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, immigrant rights, civil rights and other issues. The California progressive movement needs to develop equally as strong and widely shared narratives that counter fear of crime and NIMBYism and tell a different story about economic self-interest.  This imbalance between strong and weak narratives plays out where narratives overlap. On the one hand, there is a strong, widely accepted narrative about racial justice that has led Californians to support criminal justice reform. On the other hand, there is a strong, conservative narrative about the danger of (a mostly imaginary) increase in crime and no effective, widely shared progressive narrative to counter it, leading to a likely repeal of some of the recently passed criminal justice measures on the ballot this November. To take another example, the progressive movement has a strong, widely shared narrative about the need to fight climate change but not convincing counter-narratives to the conservative story about consumers paying the cost of climate change measures with higher gas prices and the loss of their gas stoves. These conflicting climate narratives lead to inconsistent climate policies. The California progressive movement needs to develop strong, widely shared narratives that show that people benefit despite the costs in the issue areas where we do not have them now.
  • Make alliances that split the potential non-progressive block.  Of course, the Progressive movement needs to build the strength of workers, renters, low-income people, and BIPOC folks (an overlapping set of groups) that are its natural base. And we need to build more unity among progressive groups. But to win governing power, building the strength and unity of our base is not enough. The California Progressive Movement also needs to build alliances based on shared self-interest with swing sectors of business, economic elites, homeowners and other actors outside the traditional progressive base. We need to build up the power of our movement at the same time as we split and weaken the movement we are fighting against. One example of such an alliance is proposed below in the discussion of a new kind of housing campaign.
  1. What RAC-CA can do to strengthen Itself and the Progressive Movement

Where RAC-CA is now

RAC-CA is the social justice arm of the Reform Jewish Movement, the largest Jewish denomination with 99 congregations and 150,000 Reform in California. RAC-CA brings synagogues and individual Jews together to work with allies across lines of race, class and faith on statewide campaigns to change policy on a variety of issues in a way that reflects Jewish values of justice, compassion, and wholeness. Here are a few of the RAC-CA’s victories, all accomplished in coalition with front line groups:

  1. Protected Californians from greenhouse gasses through the passage of AB 1866 and AB 2716 in 2024. These two bills shut down idle and low-producing oil wells, protecting Californians from greenhouse gases emitted by these wells that increase global warming and expose nearby residents to significant adverse health effects.
  2. Protected residential neighborhoods from oil drilling by passing AB 1137 in 2022 and preventing an oil industry ballot referendum that could have overturned this law in 2024. Now, new oil wells are not allowed within 3200 feet of homes, schools and similar sites and owners are required to monitor existing wills in this area and mitigate dangerous emittances that threaten the health of nearby residents.
  3. Created better working conditions by passing the Garment Workers Protection Act in 2021, requiring retailers to pay minimum wage and provide safe working conditions for garment workers, the majority of whom are immigrant women.
  4. Expanded Medi-Cal eligibility through the passage of AB 133 in 2021. Today, people of all ages who meet the income requirements are eligible for Medi-Cal, regardless of their citizenship status.
  5. Tripled funding for the Cal-VIP gun violence prevention program in 2019, funding local gun violence prevention programs that have been proven to work.
  6. Provided a framework for the state to address racial profiling by passing The Racial and Identity Profiling Act AB-953 in 2015. Now, California police at all levels report on their stops and arrests and any complaints about racial or identity profiling. The Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board created by this law analyzes the data and provides recommendations for combatting racial and identity profiling.
  7. Protected undocumented immigrants by passing AB-4 The Trust Act in 2013 and SB-54 The California Values Act in 2017. The 2013 law limits local jails from wastefully holding people for extra time, solely for deportation purposes. The 2017 law ensures that no state and local resources are used to assist federal immigration enforcement and that our schools, our hospitals, and our courthouses are safe spaces for everyone in our community.

RAC California contributed two main things to these campaigns.

First, RAC-CA has a base of people in some geographic locations that many of the coalitions that RAC-CA has been a part of don’t have a base. Many (but not all) of RAC-CA’s congregations are located in white, suburban areas. RAC-CA has been able to get meetings with legislators in these areas, and sometimes has influenced them.

Second, RAC-CA has influencers in their congregations. These influencers include campaign donors, elected officials themselves, and other prominent people. When RAC-CA was part of a campaign to get Governor Jerry Brown to sign rather than veto a racial profiling law, Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, a member of a Los Angeles Reform synagogue, got Governor Brown on the phone when very few people could reach him. Emanuel and his Rabbi were able to convey the message of the campaign to the Governor.[7]

Of course, this access to Brown alone would not have succeeded in passing the racial profiling bill. The coalition knew that Brown considered himself a religious person (he had gone to Seminary) and a civil rights ally. Groups rooted in communities of color moved their base into action, recreating a famous United Farm Workers march across the state. Faith groups mobilized clergy to contact Brown, includingthe priest who performed his marriage ceremony. Other groups mobilized prominent civil rights leaders like Dolores Huertes to reach out to the Governor. RAC-CA’s action was just one action in a series of actions – and not the most important action – needed to convince Brown to sign the bill into law, which he ultimately did. But it contributed to the ultimate victory as part of a multi-race, multi-class, multi-face “bridging” effort[8].

Yet despite these successes, RAC-CA has not maximized its power nor contributed all that it could contribute to the progressive movement. RAC-CA has been limited by several factors:

  1. Lack of focus in the face of small staff. RAC has tried to be a Jewish PICO CA, engaging in every part of the organizing process: listening campaigns with our base, research into issue campaigns in order to choose campaigns that resonate with our base and have a chance to make a difference, campaigns with actions appropriate for our base but also fitting in the larger coalition strategy. The coalitions RAC-CA has been part of have had varying levels of strategic sophistication and strength. In some coalitions, it has been easy for RAC-CA to fit its actions within a clear and effective strategy. In other coalitions, the strategy and tactics of the coalition have been less developed, and RAC-CA has had to develop strategy and tactics on its own.

RAC-CA’s ambitions are laudable, but PICO-CA has 17 statewide staff members[9] along with the organizing staff of its nine affiliate organizations around the state. RAC-CA has one organizer plus limited staff support on communications, fundraising and administration from national denominational staff. There is no way that one staff person can do everything with its base of 99 congregations and 150,000 Reform Jews spread across the state that PICO California does with its vastly greater staff resources.

  • Orientation of RAC-CA’s base. RAC actively engages leaders among its base of people. Due to their natural instincts and inadequate development, many leaders see their role as passing bills in one-year campaigns and not as winning power to make long-term fundamental change. Part of the reason for this narrow view is a class perspective: many Reform congregants are doing quite well in the current system. They want to bring California into alignment with Jewish values, but they do not want to impact their lives. But part of this narrow view is also a lack of imagination about what kind of change is possible. RAC-CA has not yet stoked that imagination and trained people on how big change happens and why it is desirable.
  • Lack of attention to base building. Some of our congregational leaders hold 1:1 meetings and engage in other forms of relational outreach and thus are able to turnout large numbers of people. But most Reform synagogues have only a small group – four to twelve people – that they can move into action. The social justice work belongs to that small group, and they don’t communicate effectively with the rest of their congregation. For RAC-CA to grow and build its power, it needs key leaders to all prioritize base building and become good at regular, relational outreach, moving the people in their congregations who are not activists into action.

Where RAC-CA should go

In order to become more effective and contribute more to the thirty-year plan to win governing power, RAC-CA should focus the time and energy of its staff and leaders on the things it uniquely brings to the progressive movement. RAC-CA should “outsource” campaign development to other groups in the progressive movement that have more capacity. The most logical partner for RAC-CA is PICO CA. This statewide interfaith network is already RAC-CA’s closest partner, and the two groups share values and a strategic outlook. PICO CA, unlike RAC-CA, is largely made up of front-line people directly affected by the issues it addresses. And PICO CA has the capacity to develop and run effective, strategic campaigns. By partnering more closely with PICO-CA, RAC-CA can free up time and energy to focus on the three things it is best positioned to contribute to the progressive movement: building a larger base of people in middle- to upper-middle-class communities; more systematically developing and mobilizing its base of “influencers”, and developing and testing out new narratives that challenge the conservative, dominant stories the currently hold sway. 

RAC-CA should focus its efforts in three areas, where it can most contribute to the larger progressive movement’s long-term strategy for building governing power:

  1. Building a larger base of people in middle- to upper-middle-class communities. RAC-CA brings a potential base of people that is largely, but not completely, in white, middle- to upper-middle-class suburban communities. The progressive movement, which is mostly made up of workers, renters, BIPOC and low-income people, doesn’t have a large base among these communities. While it is important that frontline people lead the effort, a white, suburban, more affluent base can be important allies. There are often swing legislators in the areas where RAC-CA has synagogues, and sometimes we are the only people who can get them on our side. A “bridging[10]” coalition that is multiracial, multiclass and multi-faith can be more powerful than a monolithic group, demonstrating the range of support behind our movement and generating interest by politicians simply because coalitions that cross lines of race, class and faith are so rare[11].

RAC-CA needs to focus more on building its base of people, creating a culture where base building is the job of all staff and leaders. Then RAC-CA can bring this base into action in multi-race, multi-faith, and multi-class coalitions led by front line groups made up of the people most affected by the issues being addressed.

  • More systematically developing and mobilizing its base of “influencers.” There are people in California Reform congregations who have access to power and sometimes some real power as well: Hollywood bigwigs, campaign large donors, elected officials and their staffs, lawyers and judges, business leaders and real estate developers, issue experts and other public figures. RAC-CA has moved influencers into action to support progressive campaigns in the past. RAC-CA needs to more systematically identify these influencers and more strategically and consistently move them into action.  
  • Develop and test out narratives that reflect progressive values of abundance, connection and hope and challenge dominant narratives of scarcity, isolation and fear. Reform Rabbis are good storytellers. They have 20 minutes each week to tell a story in front of dozens, hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. Rabbis can use their sermons to test out alternative narratives that provide a worldview rooted in our values that can lead to more progressive policies. But like many organizing groups, RAC-CA has usually focused on short-term messaging specific to its current organizing campaign. This short-term messaging is limited by and often reinforces the accepted terms of the debate, which are often contradictory to progressive vision and worldview.[12]

RAC-CA and its Rabbis can tell long-term narratives based in progressive values that challenge the dominant narratives. Reform Rabbis should take narratives developed by the larger progressive movement, test them out, try variations, and report back to the larger progressive movement about what we have learned. In this way, the sermons of Rabbis can not only reach and influence the people who listen to them but can also generate learnings for the larger progressive movement on which narratives we should pursue.

RAC-CA should focus its work in these three areas – base building, identification and mobilization of influencers, and narrative work – as its best way to contribute to the long-term efforts of the progressive movement to build governing power in California. RAC-CA should adopt a closer relationship with PICO CA or another group, taking up their campaigns in order to eliminate or minimize staff and leader time spent on other things besides the three areas where we can contribute the most to the progressive movement.  

  1. A New Kind of Housing Campaign

Let us look at a potential new kind of housing campaign that can be a model of the direction the California progressive movement should move and how RAC-CA can contribute to that movement.

What Hasn’t Work in Addressing the Housing Crisis

Tenant, housing and homeless advocates have been pursuing the same strategies for at least 40 years:  1) pursuing tenant protections, like rent control and eviction protections, 2) getting more money for the construction or preservation of affordable housing, either through government or private sources (like inclusionary housing) and 3) developing small scale models of alternative, nonspeculative housing, like land trusts and housing cooperatives or “social housing”. In the forty years since I began as a housing organizer pursuing these strategies, the housing and homeless crises have only gotten worse.

There are two problems with these strategies. First, we don’t have the power to win permanent victories big enough to make a difference. We can win temporary victories, like eviction protections during the pandemic, but the trend is going in the wrong direction. We have not been able to build a big enough coalition and divide the opposition to have enough power to win the changes we want to see.

Second and more fundamentally, these policy changes – tenant protections, money for affordable housing, and small-scale alternative housing models – are not enough to solve the housing and homeless crises. They are essentially defensive measures that don’t get at the economic forces that are driving up the cost of housing. There is a real shortage of housing in California at all levels, and it would take building 3. 5 million homes to close that gap.[13] In the face of this shortage, rich people are forced to look for housing in middle-class neighborhoods, middle-class people in low-income neighborhoods and low-income people don’t have anywhere to go. No amount of tenant projections and money for affordable housing can offset the economic forces caused by this shortage.

There is a constituency for building massive numbers of market-rate units, but alas that constituency – made up of housing developers and YIMBY groups – is not focused on equity issues, those faced by tenants and BIPOC people who have been systematically excluded.[14] They just want to upzone and build. Housing equity organizers on their part are opposed to upzoning and new building of market-rate (read luxury) housing, fearing with good reason that the new housing will be built in their neighborhoods, forcing low-income and BIPOC residents out.

What Might Work:  A New Approach

Neither the housing equity package (tenant protections, money for affordable housing, small-scale alternative housing) nor upzoning/building can alone solve the housing crisis. But a combination of the two measures might indeed solve it.

Is an alliance between housing equity organizers and YIMBY advocates possible? Maybe. Those who want to develop lots of housing face opposition from a powerful force: homeowners and homeowner associations. An alliance between developers and YIMBY groups on the one hand and tenant and housing advocates on the other could be a powerful alliance if the tenant and housing groups are united (a big if). Throw in the building trades unions, who are always in favor of building more, and progressive unions like SEIU, which has shown concern for the housing needs of its members, and you have an even more powerful alliance.

The alliance would have to unite around an agenda that included upzoning and relaxation of other regulations in order to make construction of housing cheaper and easier. It would also have to include equity measures, like tenant protections, money for affordable housing and funding for “social housing.” There would need to be an agreement that the new market-rate housing was spread out among all neighborhoods and not exclusively built in low-income and BIPOC neighborhoods in a way that pushed out the current residents.

Such a coalition might have enough power to pass this joint YIMBY/Equity agenda, while at the same time strengthening the progressive movement for its thirty-year effort to win governing power in several ways:

  • It could unite progressive forces, bringing together housing and tenant groups that have been divided among themselves along with some key unions. The relationships and trust built in this campaign could pave the way for other collaborative efforts involving more people.
  • It could divide the real estate and business community, pealing off some key groups from the “mod” camp (those supporting the dominant paradigm and opposing progressive policy and values). By creating an alliance with some real estate groups and developers, it creates the possibility for moving them away from their alliances with the rest of capital, weakening anti-progressive forces.
  • It can develop narratives about housing that challenge the dominant narrative of zero-sum choices, NIMBY attitudes and scarcity.

Of course, there are risks to this strategy.  If the millions of new housing units are concentrated in low-income and BIPOC neighborhoods, it will lead to the displacement of current residents. This kind of displacement is what we have historically seen in private/government, large-scale development efforts – which is why urban renewal efforts of the 1960s were called “urban removal.” Homeowners in wealthy and middle-class homeowners have more power to stop development in their neighborhoods, but the success of this approach requires that new housing be built in all neighborhoods. To accomplish this, we need powerful, new narratives that can win over some homeowners as well as the political power to overcome the opposition of those not willing to get on board.

RAC-CA’s role in this new housing campaign

Reform Jews are not the ones who would negotiate the agenda with the real estate/developer representatives: that is the role of the front-line groups. RAC-CA would have three roles:

  • To bring developers and realtors to the table. We have developers and realtors in our congregations, and we could bring them into relationship with frontline tenant and housing groups to negotiate a shared agenda. I believe they are open to coming to the table because this new campaign appeals to both their material self-interest – there is money to be made in increasing housing development of market-rate housing – but also their moral vision of promoting equity and solving the housing crisis.
  • To help develop and test out new narratives about housing in California in sermons and other communications with synagogue members. These narratives would have to mitigate fears that new housing in their neighborhoods would damage their quality of life and property values while activating their values and vision of a future without homelessness.
  • To mobilize a constituency of suburban homeowners to support this campaign. That means that RAC-CA would lead discussions in congregations, challenging their NIMBYism and urging synagogue members to take courageous action on their stated concerns about homelessness. I do not want to imply this will be easy. Many people in RAC-CA’s base are homeowners who care about addressing homelessness but also are fearful of lessening their quality of life and the property value of their homes. We need new stories that address their fears and allow them to realize their values and vision for the future. While these discussions will be hard, I believe movement is possible. if we cannot win over a good number of people from the RAC-CA base, who are liberal to progressive in their values, then this campaign will never be successful.

This campaign has the potential to make a game-changing impact, challenging the economic forces that are driving the housing market in a way that benefits low-income and BIPOC people. It can build power for the progressive movement by uniting progressive sectors that had previously been divided (housing groups and unions) and dividing the often-conservative real estate and developer sectors.  It advances the movement toward the thirty-year goal of winning governing power.

V. Conclusion

The progressive movement in California is at another transition point. It can continue in its current state of contested power, winning some battles and losing others, and not move forward or backward. The progressive movement can weaken, moving back toward where it was in the 1990s when it was not able to contend for power at the state level – a depressing state of affairs. But there is another, more positive possibility, where the progressive movement comes together around a long-term strategy to win power, develops new narratives and strategies to split the opposition, and over time wins governing power. RAC-CA will not be at the center of this progressive renaissance, but we have a clear role to play in helping to make it happen. RAC-CA brings an important constituency, key influencers, and the ability to develop and test out narratives. We can be part of this positive change if RAC-CA forms a closer partnership with PICO CA or another group in order to focus our efforts on our most important potential contributions to the fight.  

[1] The writing of this paper was concluded before election day, November 5 2024.

[2] The P3 Organizing Seminar was a nine-month program “for 6-10 organizers with a decade or more of experience in community organizing and movement leadership to take a step back from their daily work and wrestle with larger questions about organizing and power with a small group of peers from across the country.” It was sponsored by the P3 Lab at John Hopkins, directed by Hahrie Han and Jane Booth-Tobin. It ended in June 2024. Yes, I am late with my final paper.

[3] For a fuller account of this turning point, see State of Resistance: what California’s dizzying descent and remarkable resurgence mean for America’s future. Pastor, Manuel. New York. The New Press, 2018

[4] Governing Power, Dan McGrath and Harmony Goldberg, Grassroots Power Program, May 2023, https://grassrootspowerproject.org/analysis/governing-power.  

[5] Former Los Angeles city council progressive Mike Bonin talks about what it was like to be lobbied by a series of Los Angeles tenant and housing groups, each with a different housing ask. See the revealing episode “Right Wing Threats to Progress: Who is the Right Wing in LA?” of the Liberty Hill podcast Conversations from the Frontlines. https://open.spotify.com/show/5BUeEnXN0cB3B2iardQj8f

[6] The Million Voters Project includes California Calls, PICO California, AACE, AAPI for Civic Empowerment, CA Black Power Network, CHIRLA, IE United, OC Action, and Power California. See https://millionvotersproject.org/about for more information.

[7] Brown said that he was surprised that Jews cared about racial profiling, and Rabbi Chasen responded “of course we care, Jews have been racially profiled for thousands of years”

[8] CF the discussion of bridging in Han, Hahrie, et al, Prisms of the People: Power and Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America, 2021, The University of Chicago Press, pp.144-145.

[9] According to their website https://picocalifornia.org/who-we-are/ on May 16, 2024.

[10] Again using the term “bridging” from Han, Hahrie, et al, Prisms of the People: Power and Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America, 2021, The University of Chicago Press, pp.144-145.

[11] To be clear, I am not saying that low-income groups and BIPOC groups have no power to accomplish things on their own, nor I am saying that they need white, upper-income groups to come in and save them. I am NOT saying that white, upper-income groups can accomplish more than BIPOC and low-income groups can. What I am saying is that a bridging, cross-class, cross-race, cross-faith alliance led by front line groups most directly affected can accomplish more than single race, class or faith groups can accomplish alone.

[12] See the discussion of narrative in the report Strategic Power Building: Alignment in States by Karen Scharff and Harmony Goldberg, published by Grassroots Power Project, March 22, 2024, p. 8.  https://grassrootspowerproject.org/analysis/strategic-power-building-alignment-in-states/

[13] The 3.5 million number comes from a 2016 Report entitled A TOOL KIT TO CLOSE CALIFORNIA’S HOUSING GAP: 3.5 MILLION HOMES BY 2025 from the Consulting Firm McKinsley & Company. The 3.5 million number was often cited by Governor Newsom. No one really knows the exact number of units we are short, but it is massive. Ben Christopher from Cal Matters looked at the different estimates of the housing shortage in May 2023 in an article entitled “California is losing population and building new houses. When will home prices come down?”

[14] As discussed in Shelby R. King’s article “IS A YIMBY/TENANT ACTIVIST BRIDGE POSSIBLE?” in the Dec 6 2022 Issue of Shelterforce.