CENTER for COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
A National Strategy for Building Civic Power
Rendering by buttnerreisdias with Ihwa Choi
Who We Are
Community Coalition (CoCo) organizes everyday people to drive meaningful change. CoCo brings people together to advance love, inclusion, equity and justice. Yet, we are living in a dangerous time, as there are forces throughout the nation actively propelling hate, division, and exclusion. History has taught us, that these forces are defeated when people unite to advance freedom.
Through community organizing we have successfully won policies and redirected public resources that have reimagined neighborhoods, increased electoral participation, and strengthened bonds between neighbors. Creating meaningful change closest to home is essential for building a multi-racial democracy.
This is our task, and now is the time to support and train everyday people across the nation in building unity, solving problems, and taking collective action to transform their communities.
Mural by artist and Community Coalition member Terrick Gutierrez
Our Vision
7518 South Vermont Avenue is the future home of Community Coalition’s Center for Community Organizing (CCO). The CCO will be a People’s Center that harnesses the power of communities and supports activists nationwide in multi-racial organizing toward our collective freedom.
The CCO’s primary focus is to train the next generation of community organizers. Through our organizing school, we will equip people and organizations with the skills, confidence, and connections required to create social change. It will generate strategy, create narratives to win hearts and minds, design art, produce campaigns, and bring to life a new world rooted in dignity, humanity, connection, and justice.
Center for Community Organizing A Political Home
As a political home, we dream of nurturing the ideas, dreams, and visions of the disenfranchised, marginalized, othered, and oppressed. The CCO will be a place for all who seek to expand freedom.
A Sacred Space
Healing community practices are vital in the long-term fight against systemic racism centered on justice and Black liberation. We strive to serve as a sanctuary for our community to unite in times of crisis and opportunity.
A Movement Hub
It will serve as a space for other organizations to collaborate. The Center will house CoCo’s dynamic power-building programs and work in solidarity with communities locally and nationally committed to building leadership from the bottom up.
A Generator of New Narratives
Artists and storytellers will tell the history of struggle, reimagine new futures, and incubate cultural strategies that inspire large numbers of people to enact social and political change.
A Steward of Permanence
We own land. Purchasing land was born from our founding members’ experiences and understanding the significance of ownership in preserving historically Black communities.
Timeline
CoCo’s 30th Anniversary & Launch Capital Fundraising
National Convening & Inaugural Organizing Programs
Land
National
2019 2020 2021 2022
Community Engagement on Space Design
Acquisition & National Organizing Fellowship
Trained 200 Fellows from 50 Organizations
Groundbreaking Ceremony
2026 2028/29
Ribbon Cutting
Fellowship Partner Organizations
With the community’s leadership, the CCO will catalyze the transformation of the Vermont Corridor, reflecting the urgent needs of South Los Angeles residents and community organizing as a long-term strategy for building civic power. The people’s efforts and the Center’s design represent what is possible and what our people deserve with the highest standards and quality design.
When we fulfill our vision, 7518 South Vermont is the address where hope was birthed time and time again, a sacred place that contributed to a world far better than the one we live in today. A place we all built together in the darkest of times, for a future bright as light, when freedom and justice is the news of the day.
