What is this thing called accomplishment? I don't know! Who does the accomplishing? It is so mysterious & so much more than cause & effect. I do know that it comes in community, but that community is more vast than I can imagine. And so, the following are just varieties of my being in the same room or in the presence of the power that emerges moment to moment. These rememberances still bring a smile to my face, joy to my heart, & gratitude for how my life has unfolded.

1. Helped staff, along with many others from NCO & OBA, the first National Peoples Action (NPA) Conference in 1972 (we hosted the presidential candidates at Northwest Community Organization) & participated in the birth of both NPA & the Metropolitan Area Housing Alliance (MPA) during the time Shel Trapp directed NCO.

2. Did local organizing around banking and housing issues & helped push for The Community Re-investment Act (CRA) & FHA Payback during the time I was an organizer & director of Northwest Community Organization. National CRA legislation was passed through the efforts of NPA & its affiliates in 1977, while I was the director of the Metropolitan Area Housing Alliance (a Chicago coalition of 25 Alinsky groups & an affiliate of NPA). More than $1.2 Trillion as of Dec. 06 has been invested in low income & communities of color since 1977.

3. Helped develop some of the first women organizers to direct community organizations while at Northwest Community Organization in Chicago (Susan Sims Maini at PACE in Providence Rhode Island in 1973 & Eunice Swedenberg Letzing who followed me as director at NCO in 1975 (the Women's Movement had a direct hand in this change in culture.).

4. Founded & directed Innercity Self Help in Washington, DC from 1977-81. WISH won an anti-condominium conversion ordinance that slowed (with help from the economy) the conversion of large numbers of rental properties which threated to throw out huge numbers of African American & Latino tenants. WISH also helped convert tenant buildings to co-ops under staffing from Roger Turpin & Sarah Case. Roger, a terrific African American organizer, followed me as director of WISH in 1981.

5. First director of Metro Organizations for People (MOP) 1981-84. It was a congregation & community based organization that is now a PICO affiliate. MOP led a successful effort to create a public utilities commission in the state of Colorado during my tenure. Mike Kromrey followed me as director in 1985 & is now a key player in PICO. Ana Garcia Ashley later directed MICAH, an affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation & now is a key player in Gamaliel.

6. Helped develop & lead the Project Director's Group from 1987-93 (it originally was a part of Mike Miller's OTC) while employed at Center for Community Change. Herb White & Wesley Woo were my coaches & co-leaders. It was a group of 30 or so organizers who were making major transitions to congregation based organizing or other new forms of organizing during that period. By the end, most of them worked for IAF, Gamaliel, PICO, & DART which is a part of what we envisioned since it is virtually impossible to do long term congregation based organizing without a network. It was during that time that PICO, Gamaliel, & DART were making great strides in converting their networks into congregation based networks. Their leaders were a part of the group of 30. The Project Director's Group was an incubator for new organizations & for the development of mature organizers. Most of its successes came from peer to peer interaction.

7. I helped form about 20 congregation based community organizations during my time at the Center. I also coached many organizers while they were directors of local community organizations around the country (i.e. - personal & professional issues, transitions to new jobs, choosing a network, etc).

8. I helped think through some of the development of the Center's National Campaign on Jobs & Income Support & the National Campaign on Community Values (I led in the effort to put together the Strategic Partners Committee) with Deepak Bhargava & others at the Center. It's turned into a place where networks & independents alike can sit at the same table & take action locally, regionally, & nationally.

9. Over time, I'd like to think I had a part in the transformation of the Center for Community Change into a genuine organizing operation. Deepak Bhargava deserves the credit for actually pulling it off.

10. Coached Gaylord Thomas & a group of clergy practitioners of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (over a 3-4 year period) in the creation of a Congregation Based Community Organizing effort within the National Church. They now have a director of congregation based community organizing (she provides a support system for congregations involved in organizing), they hold regular convenings of congregations involved in congregation based organizing, the networks train the bishops of the ELCA in congregation based organizing, the church requires that students of all their seminaries take congregation based community organizing before they graduate & the ELCA has now convened an ecumenical group of denominations to do the same (Interfaith Organizing Initiative).

11. Ed Shurna & I did organizer training sessions for FOCO in Germany which emerged into a European wide organizing center through the efforts of Paul Cromwell & Peter Szynka.