About Our Organization:
ACTION received its non-profit status in 2003, but was founded in the fall of 2001 with a public meeting with over 2,500 people in downtown Youngstown. Currently, ACTION has 17 member institutions from the city and surrounding suburbs. In the past four and one half years, ACTION has achieved the following:
Successfully fought to bring a major grocery store to the Southside of Youngstown.
Successfully educated voters to accept two critical bond levies: one to bring in $160 million from the state to build new or modernize all public schools in Youngstown and the other to ensure a more equitable redistribution of county resources to build our urban core.
Forced the city of Youngstown to recognize the scourge of predatory lending in our community and establish a department to both research and help prosecute predatory lenders.
Played a critical role in bringing federal and national attention to the problem of public corruption among public officials and community leaders which led to federal, state, and local prosecutions and a vast reduction in public corruption.
Convened an initial table of key public officials and community leaders to address issues of urban sprawl and inner city decay.
Impacted the Youngstown School District and local contractors and construction trades to increase the number of women and minorities involved in school construction and modernization projects.
ACTION is a membership based organization composed of 15 institutions. Each institution pays 1% of their operating budget in dues. Membership ranges from inner city African American churches to suburban Catholic Churches ACTION has a board of 15 people who are elected from the general membership every two years. ACTION has an active leadership base of 25 leaders who are involved in the day to day organizing campaigns that the organization undertakes. Currently ACTION has one full time organizer, Rose Carter, who has Twenty-five years of Community experience .The organization has a part time bookkeeper, a treasurer on the Board, and requires two signatures for checks. A financial review of the 2008 books is finished.
ACTION covers the Mahoning Valley which encompasses three counties in Ohio with a total population of 560,000 people. Our work is centered in Mahoning County and the city Youngstown. Mahoning County is the 10th poorest county in the country (250,000 people or larger) based on median income and 12% of the population live in poverty. 16% of the population is African American and 3% is Hispanic. Only 12% of adults in the region have a college degree.
Neighborhood safety is one of the most prominent and wide spread issues for Mahoning County. A drug dealer was shot multiple times in front of 600 families at a youth football game. These types of acts of violence are becoming routine in the city of Youngstown. Our organizing approach is two-fold: First, we have a Community Safety and Justice Committee that develops strategic campaigns to address immediate concerns. On a neighborhood level, the majority of residents initially get involved with ACTION because they want to see immediate action taken regarding areas of high gang, drug, or prostitution activity, commonly referred to as “hotspots”. The Committee’s goal is to address these hotspots effectively by increasing the involvement of institutions, training adult and youth leaders to become effective crime prevention experts, and developing a mechanism to ensure maximum accountability among law enforcement officials. The desired accountability starts with community leaders taking the initiative to identify crime hotspots and submitting information related to those hotspots at quarterly public meetings. The law enforcement officials then process the information and provide progress reports the following meeting to be evaluated by the community. Hot Spot information cards will be distributed through out the Valley, which will help us to identify "hot spot" areas.
To date, ACTION’s committee has been able to address many of these immediate concerns effectively by building working relationships with the local police and city officials. Last year the organization involved hundreds of people in a series of Holy Ground Marches that resulted in the clean up of dozens of problem buildings and hot spots. However, ACTION realizes that addressing immediate safety concerns and increasing enforcement, while necessary, rarely creates long term social change.
The second part of ACTION’s approach is to develop and educate leaders through the Committee’s work so that leadership will naturally begin to work on some of the underlying causes of drug and gang activity (i.e. lack of decent jobs, lack of youth programs, poorly maintained parks, failing and overcrowded schools, etc.). ACTION’s overall goal is to deliver concrete victories regarding safety issues while using its Committee to be a training ground for leaders to advance and think about safety in the larger context of what societal factors create the current environment.
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