Now that the city has seen people of color win city-wide office in two consecutive elections, however, King sees his dream coming to fruition.

“This is the kind of thing one hopes for all their lives, when folks realize that it’s in their best interests to come together,” King said, looking out at a room full of blacks, Latinos, Asians and whites gathered for the New Majority Coalition’s second annual meeting. “What we’ve accomplished is a small part of what needs to happen throughout the world.”

Members of the coalition, which was formed a year ago, worked on the campaigns of at-large City Councilor Felix Arroyo and Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral. While the organization has until now existed as a loosely-formed coalition, at Monday’s meeting the organization voted in board members.

Currently, the organization is holding what members call street talks — sessions held with different neighborhood groups to determine what their priorities are. Those meetings have been held at various locations in Chinatown, the South End, Roxbury, Dorchester and Jamaica Plain.

Ultimately, the talks will reach communities of color throughout the city, according to coalition member Sheila Martin.

“We want to continue getting into communities,” she said. “We want to start building participation so we can develop an agenda that comes from the people.”

So far, people in the group’s meetings have identified issues including affordable housing, public safety and education reform as top priorities for the organization. Chinese Progressive Association Executive Director Lydia Lowe said the New Majority Coalition will help Boston’s majority of people of color gain real representation in the government and civic life of the city.

“After the most recent election in September, people can see that politics is changing in Boston,” she said. “In order to make this happen, we need to be organized. Just having the numbers alone won’t make it happen.”

Lowe said the organization hopes to have an agenda by the 2005 city elections that will enable it to hold politicians of all ethnicities accountable.

Because people of color have long been marginalized in the city’s civic life, the street talks have the potential to bring their agenda to the fore, according to UMass Boston Political Science Professor Paul Watanabe.

“A lot of people look at the city’s growing communities of color as votes,” he said. “I think we should look at them as resources. They’ve not only been shut out of the political process, their ideas have been shut out as well.”

Speaking before the gathering, City Councilor Chuck Turner said that the growing power exercised by people of color mirrors the changes that occurred more than 100 years ago when Irish Americans began to take power from the Yankee establishment.

“Our work is cut out for us,” he said. “Our work is not just identifying candidates. What we have to really figure out is how do we construct a society that is fair, that is committed to justice, that has mechanisms for sharing wealth and power.”