Building Community in a Nation of Neighborhoods
Feature Story by Corrine Yu - 11/19/2002
CommUNITY 2000 has announced the release of a new report detailing a menu of community tension reduction strategies and the national and local partners' contributions to the project. The report, entitled "Building Community in a Nation of Neighborhoods," documents the successes and challenges of the nation's first initiative to reduce and respond to housing-related tensions.The events of September 11 brought CommUNITY 2000's accomplishments into focus. Thanks to CommUNITY 2000, in several communities around the country, those concerned about reprisals were able to act more decisively than ever before. Within three days after the attacks, the Fair Housing Council of San Diego, a CommUNITY 2000 partner, sent fliers in Arabic explaining state and federal protections from hate crimes and distributed the template nationally. A few days later, the national team of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF) and theNational Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) announced publication of its "Fight Hate" hate crime prevention and response handbook. Chicago and Boston CommUNITY 2000 partners' local advisory networks released statements condemning acts of hate.
The report documents the first phase of CommUNITY 2000 from July 1999 to December 2001. In Phase Two, which began in December 2000, CommUNITY 2000 is building on its work in Boston, extending the program to the Triangle Region of North Carolina, and exporting disability-related strategies to both sites.
"We felt it was not enough to stress enforcement of the law," said Karen McGill Lawson, LCCREF's executive director. "We wanted to find out what the community can do to prevent tensions when newcomers come into the neighborhood, what it can do to proactively welcome newcomers, and when problems occur what the response should be."
"Most people don't know how to fight hate crimes, even in the fair housing arena, not to mention the political arena and law enforcement," said Shanna Smith, NFHA's executive director. "These materials are concrete guides to help them understand what we learned and replicate it, so that they don't have to reinvent the wheel."
The report is available for download at www.community2000online.org.
