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About 100 seasoned community organizers, writers, thinkers, public servants and policy makers joined the Horizon Institute at the California Endowment on June 29 for a half-day conference on building a movement for economic change. Featured speakers included Kelly Candaele, Horizon's Executive Director, Peter Dreier, Horizon Board member and Professor of Politics at Occidental College; Professors Manuel Pastor and Martha Matsuoka, authors of This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity are Reshaping Metropolitan America; and Sheila Kuehl, former California State Senator and Horizon Fellow. The event also featured a panel of Los Angeles community activists: Elza Barbosa of SCOPE; Patricia Castellanos of LAANE, Katherine Perez of the Urban Land Institute; Jared Rivera of LA Voice, and break-out sessions in which participants shared contacts and ideas. Kent Wong, Horizon Board member and Director of the UCLA Labor Center, chaired the conference.

The key word for the day was strategy. Peter Dreier asked us to focus on such issues as the right mix of electoral, legislative, legal and mass mobilizing work and identifying our core values and key issues on which to build consensus. Dr.'s Pastor and Matsuoka explored the possibility of regional alliances for the common good. For example, urban and suburban communities who want improved transportation can be organized to fight for the green jobs that will get the transportation built, for the constructive role of government in funding the projects and, ultimately, for the values of shared rights and responsibilities that will build civic engagement. Sheila Kuehl inspired us by reminding us that, until the New Deal, the labor movement had been the tortoise compared to the runaway hare of big business and that, by slowly building its base and winning local victories, the trade unionists were able, when asked by President Roosevelt what they wanted, to articulate a program and lead a movement to make it happen.

The break-out groups were especially valuable for thinking about linkages and making contacts. For example, the movement for mixed-use affordable housing built around transportation hubs is, explicitly, part of the green LA program and, also, a source of good green union jobs. The national conversation about healthcare demonstrates how that one issue is pivotal to all aspects of economic recovery and how a publicly owned plan would free the energy of organized labor to mobilize around other workplace issues. Finally, Dr. Pastor observed that, Dr. Martin Luther King did not say, "I have issues," (who among us does not?); he said, "I have a dream." Everyone agreed on the necessity for a positive, proactive vision of an improved world. Horizon will continue to bring people together to articulate that vision.