Through ICON, our Broad-Based organizing group, Pomona Pres has worked with churches, non-profits, and our neighbors to address issues of common concern to build on the assets of families, neighborhoods, and local institutions. ICON identifies, develops, and trains local leaders. Some of the issues our people have identified and on which we have worked are: to obtain lighting in dark and neglected neighborhoods, negotiate with a large recycler to prevent Pomona from becoming a regional trash processing, and currently working to create affordable housing.
As an organizer, I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be - it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.
Saul Alinsky