New Majority Coalition contemplates next steps

Yawu Miller

In developing a political agenda last year, members of the New Majority Coalition engaged members of the Asian, black and Latino communities in discussions aimed at identifying the concerns of the people of color who make up the majority of the city’s population and a minority of its elected officials.

In May, coalition members met at the Women’s Service Club’s Massachusetts Ave. building to agree on an agenda that included changing the city’s affordable housing guidelines, supporting more funding for jobs for youths, the establishment of a civilian review board, CORI law reform and more staff for parent outreach coordinators in the Boston Public Schools.

Those priorities became fodder for city council hearings and the city council race as coalition members and their organizations worked together to help shape public policy. A candidates forum held in October helped put many of the group’s objectives on the table.

“People were talking about it for weeks because we put out some hard questions that let people really distinguish between candidates,” said Lydia Lowe, the coalition’s chairwoman.

Take the issue of the city’s use of the area median income in devising affordable housing income guidelines. While city officials factor in the incomes of wealthy suburban communities in the calculation for the area median income, the coalition supports Councilor Felix Arroyo’s call for defining as affordable the median income of Boston residents only.

If the candidates were unaware of the issue before the coalition’s forum, by the end they were all in agreement with the plan. Similarly, all the candidates expressed support for reforming the state’s CORI laws, which often prevent applicants with arrest records from securing jobs.

Perhaps more importantly, all incumbent councilors — even those with uncontested races — supported Councilor Chuck Turner’s resolution calling on the city to refuse to do business with firms that discriminate against job applicants with CORI records.

Perhaps more than in any other race, voters of color were sought-after by the eight at-large candidates in the city council race and the coalition’s articulation of the policy preferences of communities of color demonstrated the organization’s ability to speak for the city’s new majority, according to former state Rep. Mel King.

“After that forum, I saw some of the candidates beginning to change their positions,” he said. “That’s the power of being able to clearly articulate what we want.”

With a campaign season and a year’s worth of mission-building behind them, coalition members are ready for their next phase, according to Lowe: organization building.

The group will now begin seeking funding, formalize its structure, outreach to new members and develop promotional materials.

“We have to find out niche,” Lowe said during a meeting of the group last week a Freedom House. “How are we different from the organizations we’ve been building coalitions with?”

Lowe suggested that the coalition could organize itself as a 501c3 nonprofit and set up separate organization with a 501c4 designation that would allow it to engage in partisan political activities.

The New Majority Coalition grew out of a 2003 conference held by the Asian American Studies, the Trotter Institute and the Gaston Institute — three think tanks run out of UMass Boston. The conference was meant to examine the growing clout of the city’s people of color who in the 2000 Census for the first time were shown to be the majority of the city’s population.

In addition to the founding institutes at UMass Boston, the coalition has worked with organizations including the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, ACORN, MassVOTE, the American Muslim Society, the Boston Tenant Coalition, the Latino political organization ¿Oiste?, Alternatives for Communities and Environment and the Commonwealth Legislative Seminar.