Mark Ridley-Thomas Hosts 18th Annual Empowerment Congress
Sixteen hundred people attended the 18th annual summit of the Empowerment Congress on Saturday at CSU Dominguez Hills. The theme was “We Are the Second District: Educated, Engaged, and Empowered for Action.”
The Second District, of course, is the area represented by Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in November 2008. More than 2.3 million people reside in this huge, sprawling district – one of five in the nation’s most populous county – which includes “Carson, Compton, Culver City, Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood and Lynwood, portions or all of ten out of fifteen Los Angeles City Council Districts and the unincorporated communities, of Alondra Park, Athens, Del Aire, Dominguez, East Compton, El Camino Village, Florence, Ladera Heights, Lennox, View Park, West Athens, West Carson, West Compton and Willowbrook.”
Supervisor Ridley-Thomas launched the Empowerment Congress in the early ’90s after his election to the Los Angeles City Council and continued to nurture the organization during his tenure in the California State Senate and, now, as County Supervisor. Initially, the Empowerment Congress was one of many citizen-activist groups without a formal tax designation, but four years ago it became a program of the California Community Empowerment Foundation, which is a project of Community Partners, the LA 501(c)(3) that serves as an incubator – offering support and infrastructure – for fledgling organizations.
What’s the role of the Empowerment Congress? As near as I can tell: to train the constituents of Mark Ridley-Thomas to become community organizers – to learn, first-hand, how to organize their neighbors and enlist local government in their efforts to solve neighborhood problems.
What a great idea! This is hands-on democracy that’s straight out of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and an ideal role for the nonprofit and voluntary sector. And, obviously, based on the enthusiastic crowd that turned out on a Saturday morning and the stories that local activists told, the Empowerment Congress has been highly successful.
In the next few days, I will offer a series of posts on this summit.
