NORA's Way: Stories of Nickerson Garden
Confidential proposal - for Boje's Use Only and those helping me get Nora's Way Web Site started
-  Please do not quote or cite without permission.
-This is on Web so Nora King and NGRMC can access the links and my volunteers at NMSU can help get a workable sample site up and running for Nora to explore - thanks  David Boje

NORA ADD THIS STORY -Not many people know that Nickerson Gardens was named after William Nickerson Jr., who in 1925 founded Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles, the first and largest Black-owned Insurance firm in LA. NG opened in 1955 and with 5,000 residents including 3,000 children living in 1,056 housing units on 68.8 acres of land is the largest development west of the Mississippi (Source NGRMC Dual Management Training Workbook, copyright NGRMC, 1994).
END SCROLLING STORYLINE

Ms. Nora King and the Board Members of
The Nickerson Gardens Resident Management Corporation
1593 E. 114^th Street, Unit 1108
Los Angeles, CA 90059
323-249-7596 (v)
323-567-4317 (fax)

August 17, 1999

to Nora; NOTE: You the NGRMC know the history that is in these endnotes. That history is not being presented in the web documents that are the subject of the proposal. I put footnotes in so others may know more of our story should this document be shown about-signed David Boje. For example, Nickerson Gardens Resident Management Corporation (NGRMC) incorporated in 1989 with Ms. Nora King as its founding president. Formal training and acknowledgement came form Housing Authority when in 1991NG and Estrada Courts became first to communities to complete training to be corporations (HACLA 1991 Annual Report, p. 8). Nora King implemented the first corporate headquarters, converting several units of public housing into corporate offices. In 1991, NGRMC was awarded a "Feasibility Study of Tenant Management" and from Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Health and Human Services (HHS) $400,000 grant (See HHS/HUD August 6, 1992). With this grant the Food Bank, Construction Company, and Transportation Company were formed. Transportation Company had 14 vans and drivers plus radio dispatch taking residents to job and medical appointments by 1994 (Source, Dual Management Workbook, 1994, p. 15. Copyright NGRMC). A draft of June 30, 1992 LMU press release reports "residents plan to open and operate a Laundromat, food co-op, and health care center, a month other businesses" (p. 3).

Dear Nora (and board members):

It was a joy to work with Nickerson between 1991 and 1996 on the Economic Empowerment Demonstration Project and 2^nd Phase of Management Training.

Phase One of Resident Management is residents forming Resident Advisory Councils (RAC) to receive training in how to plan, organize, and manage their community and to give input to the Housing Authority. "The Purpose of RAC is to stimulate economic, educational, social, and quality of life initiatives" (copyright 1994 Dual Management Workbook, p. 14). In Phase Two, the RAC's incorporate to become their own Resident Corporations, called "Resident Management Corporations." RMCs are directed to do business development, education, job training and development and other self-help initiatives (See Federal Register Vol. 59(92) May 13, 1994, page 25248). NGRMC incorporated in 1989 to form the Nickerson Gardens Resident Management Corporation (NGRMC).
Not many know that in 1991 Nickerson Gardens became one of the first public housing communities in LA to enroll in HUD Secretary Jack Kemp's Phase One resident initiatives (phase one is forming Resident Advisory Councils). As of 1994, there were 383 around the country. Bertha Gilkey was hired as a consultant to do the Phase One training for Nickerson Gardens, Estrada Courts, and Jordan Downs.

As you know, I have relocated to New Mexico State University. I was happy to work with you, because I learned a lot of wisdom, I got opportunities to do things I could not have otherwise done. I worked hard to get the students and faculty and the grants office and the Dean and the college President of Loyola Marymount University to come into partnership with you. I understand the Peace Corps Fellows have graduated and now the Business College did not, for whatever reasons, send new ones (Darrin Nellis, web Resume).

My Dual Management involvement (David Boje) began as a NGRMC volunteer in 1991. I had been asked by Nora King to come to the NGRMC for a meeting, upon the recommendation of my former UCLA MBA student, Ms. Lauren Frelix sometime in late 1991. Lauren wanted the Phase Two NGRMC consulting contract to be awarded to her by HUD/HACLA and she wanted me (an outsider to HACLA/HUD) to apply as a strategic planning consultant to the NGRMC. She wanted someone from the Business Community,, instead of the consultants being sent around by the government agencies as certified for contract hire to RMCs. It was, as I recall after the term was over and we were to go on Christmas break. I went to meet the board of the NGRMC and Nora King around the end of the year.Nora asked "What makes you think a Business College professor can consult to a residents' corporation? Others asked my experience. I told my story "grew up on welfare, abandoned with my mother, and me eldest of four children. Watched the welfare case worker walk right into my bedroom without a knock, open my drawers, go through my personal things, and ask "where'd you get this transistor radio. Look's new. That will be deducted from your mom's check." Nora and the board I think were a bit taken by my experience. Nora told me 16 August, 1999 she recalls the interview and thought I came across as an honest and spiritual person, someone they could trust. I have tried to never let her down.

And now the Peace Corps Fellows Program is now the property of the Housing Authority. But, there are some web documents at Loyola Marymount that give a sense of the founding vision: One from 1993, is still on the web and says "Peace corps volunteers will live and work at Nickerson Gardens while they earn an MBA at the University (Source Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Volume 17, #2, October 1993). Nora, you tell me they no longer live or work in the Gardens.

  NGRMC on March 18, 1992 sent a letter from Nora King to me that states "The Nickerson Gardens Resident Management Corporation requests your services to conduct training to the Board of Directors and staff on personnel management and to assist the RMC in creating a personnel policy manual. We would appreciate your submitting a Work Plan and Time Schedule as soon as possible." This letter was written to satisfy the HACLA/HUD that had money for that kind of consulting. March 29, 1992 NGRMC ran an add in LA Times offering consultants to submit proposals to the NGRMC. April 3, 1992 I sent my application, copy of the LA Times ad, RFP from NGRMC etc. to HACLA/HUD and still have not heard back from them about being hired. April 14, 1992 an NGRMC Board resolution was "moved by Reatha Beech that Dave Boje be hired for Resident Management Training. Seconded by Vincent Woods. Adoped 4-14-92" (Source Copy of NGRMC Minutes and signatures of all board members). And for the next eight months I received $700 a month directly from the NGRMC board. Then the money ran out and I just kept going back for free, volunteering, not expecting pay, and not wanting any either.

And, as I understand it the Sursum Corda service fraternity of students of Loyola Marymount University come to Nickerson Gardens still, but go to Crystal Stairs to do tutoring and not to the Resident Management Corporation of Nickerson Gardens (NGRMC). Tutoring is also no longer yours.

I would encourage you to put your side of the story of residents initiating many fantastic partnerships with universities, Peace Corps, and government agencies on the web. Your partners have their stories on the web. What if you tell of your original vision of the RMC of Nickerson Garden, give a history of grass roots empowerment, how you grew the partnering with "service learning" (student tutors, student architects, students to consult small business, etc.) on the web?

When Nora King became RMC's first President and CEO in 1991, she formed a Transportation Company (with buses and drivers), a Construction Company (to bid on Housing Authority building and renovation contracts), a Food Bank, a Riordan Computer Learning Center (where the first tutors from LMU went to do tutoring with the kids after school). And the Tutoring Program (in partnership with Loyola Marymount University) and carried on still by Campus Ministries and the Sursum Corda student service organization. (Source, NGRMC Dual Management Workbook, copyright 1994, NGRMC, p. 17). Most of all Nora King wanted from this Business College professor and the LMU Business College some help in developing a business plan and strategy for the NGRMC. Estrada Courts hit the ground running, its corporation getting planning assistance from TELACU, along with insurance and years of experience in running construction and other companies. Watts' RMCs did not have such support and reached out to Business Colleges to find it. TELACU got UNOCOL involved with the Estrada RMC (Alicia Rodriguez, President) and funding of $25,000 to sponsor a 4-H after school activity. Nora King wanted corporate support for her community as well.
On May 8th, 1992 LMU paid for my trip to Bromley Heath Resident Management Corporation in Boston. I saw a 20 year successful program of residents managing their own affairs, including maintenance, rent collection, and modernization. This had not been attempted in LA. On 11 June, 1992 the NGRMC Board met and accepted my proposal from their March 29th ad. They were trying to get me paid through HUD and HACLA to provide "Resident Management Training." But HUD and HACLA kept putting up road blocks. I just kept volunteering and working, hoping somehow my application as a Phase Two consultant would get funded. . On August 20th, 1992 I drafted a proposal with Nora King and the NGRMC board members and staff to implement the first Dual Management initiative for joint management by NGRMC and HACLA. On November 6, 1992 (Inter-office NGRMC Memo) I summarized negotiations to Ms King :I faxed the summary to Julio Morales [of Dual Management Contract] to Julio Morales so he could review the corrections before we go to meet Mr. Shuldiner downtown at 3:30 P.M. next Tuesday. [Note: The contract I drafted was 25 pages ]I am confident and praying that we can get agreement on a contract we can sign off on next Tuesday." On December 1, 1992 I asked Ms Beech, RMC Treasurer to help me research Workers' comp costs for the seven positions we were negotiating with HA (we started asking for all, then 12, and settled on 7, Source Inter-office NGRMC memo). On December 4th, 1992 after three months of hard negotiation that contract was signed. And on January 4, 1993 the first seven employees went to work for NGRMC to do work NGRMC subcontracted from the Housing Authority. Those seven people were never late, never missed work, got the most excellent performance reviews from the Housing Authority and the NGRMC and because of their efforts and the Mothers of NG, those contracts were renewed May 2nd, 1994.
The names of the courageous seven people are Rochelle Hughes, Brenda Adams, Norman Cordiff, Estelle Sims, Janice Williams, Carol Holbert and Paulette Miskell (DM manual, p. 19). The business plan of NGRMC included subcontracting all the mainenance, gardenting, and eventually rent collection services from the City, founding small businesses and an Micro Enterprise Incubator. This was the reason the Peace Corps Fellows grant was initiated by NGRMC, to get Peace Corps students into the MBA where they could learn entrepreneurship and conduct workshops at NG and write grants and do professional staff development training of the NGRMC employees, volunteers and corporate officers (Source, Dual Management Workbook, 1994: p. 14-15. Copyright NGRMC.

How you got $400,000 grants and HHS/HUD August 6, 1992 grants, are in web sties now, and could be referenced by the NGRMC to tell how Resident Management Corporation, with Transportation, Construction and other companies began. NG-RMC is I think a heroic story of grass roots (bottom up) empowerment, reaching out to partner with several universities, your entrepreneurship in starting a transportation company, construction company, food bank, etc. and bringing in the Peace Corps to do small business start ups at NG, write grants with NGRMC and how you worked with me and other professors over the years. Others are telling your stories, but in not so empowering ways. Politicians Like Jack Kemp and Congress woman Maxine Waters tell Nickerson stories (See Kemp interview by Lehrer, October 6, 1996; Congresswoman Maxine Waters' web sties, and so does HACLA,). So tell your own.

New Business (When Others Tell Your Stories)

The Web Sites are not telling the Nickerson Gardens story well. I am attaching a copy of a Popular Mechanics Article (Source Samuel Katz "Felon Bustors, Popular Mechanics, May, 1997). Nora and RMC Board members, you can not see it, but this letter has what are called hyper-text links (lit up in blue) where when clicked on call up each of the web documents I will comment on, each mentioning our beloved Nickerson Gardens. And not just Popular Mechanics Magazine, but many stories such as these, gives the world, the business community, and grant foundations one side of a story with many sides:

See: A Social Experiment in Pulling Up Stakes: Does neighborhood affect economic and school success? Five cities relocate poor families to find out.").

• Headline Reads "Life in the Hood" and continues "The notorious Nickerson Gardens housing project, a sterile mixture of concrete slabs and a few patches of beaten-down grass. A better name would be the War Zone" (Source Patrick Kinahan, Salt Lake Tribune, 1998, Seen also at Final Four and at a third site " Miller's Mom Kept Andre on Path to Success" March 28, 1998).

Result: These NG story fragments are being marketed to the world on the World Wide Web, the new Internet for Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce the business world calls it). The Popular Mechanics (1997) photos are shocking, and such a gross, one-sided (slanted) story. But not all media, KCET and Center for Public Broadcasting are exceptions. Another side is told in the People's Tribune "Deadly Force Column," or North Coast X-Press, August-September, 1997 and these are also on the web. And some independent work too: Lee Ballinger, "War and Peace," (April 9, 1999) adds his Nickerson story. My point is with your own photos of what family life is like at NG, I think people around the world would quickly see you are not deserving of Military Invasion - as the stories and photos portrayed in Popular Mechanics (1997) assert.

And once in a while the Los Angels Times, tells a story different from the Popular Mechanics stories that dominate the media:

• LA Times 1/26/98Two weeks ago, the Grape Street Crips from the Jordan Downs housing project played football against Nickerson Gardens' Bounty Hunters. More than 400 people attended. There were no fights (Former gangbangers and grass-roots groups contribute to drop in homicide rate. LA Times 1/26/1998)

Would Popular Mechanics tell the story differently if they knew about Carla Williams's storytelling work:

• Carla Williams - In early 1993, on a grant from the Dutch government, Lixenberg spent a month going daily to Imperial Courts to observe and photograph the residents there. Initially they were leery of her presence and intentions, and with good reason. Beginning with the controversial police shooting in November 1991 of twenty-eight-year old Henry Peco during a blackout at Imperial Courts, the residents had been inundated with news media and politicians. About two weeks before the first verdicts, members of the Crips and Bloods rival gangs at the Imperial Courts, Nickerson Gardens, and Jordan Downs projects drafted a treaty based on an Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, announced a truce, and effected a moratorium on inter-gang killings. Then the riots/uprising/rebellion happened; presidential hopeful Bill Clinton toured the area. (From "People of Watts," by Ntozake Shange, a poem inspired by Dana Lixenberg's photographs, in VIBE, issue and volume number (November 1993), p. 79 --- now part of an.Art Exhibit Announcement 1998 for exhibit May-June, 1999).

Ms. Nora King and the NGRMC Board, there is a lot of art in Nickerson Gardens. Some of it the Peace Corps Fellows did help initiate. The University tells the story this way:

Besides Loyola Marymount University and Peace Corps students planting trees, there are also UCLA students who do tree planting at Nickerson Gardens as one of their service learning initiatives. UCLA students

But, you and I know there is another artistic Mural, on the side of the Nickerson Gardens' gym that needs a storytelling.

Nora King and dear board members, your Nickerson Gardens is in the Web Site news, as far away as Germany (Gängkrigens huvudstad). And there are also web sties telling and selling Ice Cube stories on the Amazon.com Web Site. If you sit back, the institutions, booksellers, news, universities, and agencies will weave, mix and match your story fragments into a storyline, you may not appreciate.

I doubt that Popular Mechanics Magazine editors know that the HACLA 1991 Annual report says that by the end of December 19,614 families are on waiting lists to get into public housing. And as I understand it even today, over a thousand families a month go on waiting lists.

UCLA students

• Yet, these photos and happy stories are also disempowering because there is no mention here and almost anywhere of Nora King, Pam Griffin, current and past board members, the staff and volunteers who worked decades to make tutoring happen. You could recommend as the NGRMC that photos and stories more accurately reflect history, and list and photo the founding partners, the NGRMC. You could also put up your own web site with photos and stories of NGRMC presidents, boards, staff and NG volunteers on it. This LMU student tutor in the picture above is cool for what the university calls, "the University tutoring program," but it does not empower NGRMC (for you and your story is invisible, perhaps just forgotten as students graduate and tutoring shifts from one office to the next at LMU). University web documents, for the world to see, rarely mention NGRMC or give any history of how what is now "their" tutoring came to be. University web sites do not mention letters of agreement and meetings between university presidents with current and former RMC officers.

 Nora tell your story--- Did you found the tutoring program or did LMU?

I recall bringing this issue of the Loyola to the Sursum Corda president and meetings at asking if they would take up the "Nickerson Gardens" tutoring program as a service project. And they did, but may now have forgotten its founding or that it was Ms. Nora King and her NGRMC board that got it going and Ms. Pam Griffin and her NGRMC board came to the campus to recruit students. I have a letter dated November 11, 1992 to Father Koppes, S.J. Dean of School of Education from Nora King. It reads "I write to attempt to come in agreement with respect to the participation of Loyola Marymount University students in the Tutoring project which has previously been discussed with you. If you agree we could seek to recruit the students now, so that the project could begin in January, 1993. There is also a proposal for "Focus LA (LMU professors meeting to do things in the community) and Sursum Corda Tutoring Program at Nickerson Gardens dated 11/30/1992. It details some of the history (Dual Management Workbook, 1992 Appendix, copyright NGRMC). It mentions LMU Professor Vicki Graf of the Education College, who went to every single elementary and middle school around NG, explained the program, and invited principals and counselors to send students to the Nickerson Gardens Tutoring Program. This was in Fall of 1992, and I recall going to these same schools with RMC staff and board members to make this same appeal. The plan called for three five-person teams. Tutors were to be trained at the NGRMC by its board.
While Sursum Corda web sites tell a story Sursum Corda says that say " Sursum Corda even pioneers successful programs such as Nickerson Gardens Tutoring series" (last update, 17 February, 1999) the program was initiated by the NGRMC well before Sursum Corda was founded (See LMU's Loyolan paper (Vol 70, no. 12, Nov. 18, 1992: page 4). E.g. (November 5, 1992 Inter-Office NGRMC Memo) "Yesterday, Judith White and I met with the Father Koppes, the Dean of the School of Educaiton at LMU… we outlines a program where 9 LMU students would come to NG once a week… The dean asked about supervison for the students. I suggested that Georgina in the RMC learning lab could supervise them along with Brenda [Jackson]…Georgina could work with Brenda and do a day or two day on-site orientation [with the LMU students]…Herb Medina, a math progessor, Judith White, a management professor and I have been working together on this project…There is a list of schools Brenda Jackson and I visited to promote the program (It includes Flounoy Elementary, 112th Elementry, Markham Jr. High, Jordan H.S. and Locke H.S.).

Then Sursum Corda can get your sense of history (last update, 17 February, 1999) And look at how schools tell this story of NG.

• NGRMC could tell its own story by going on the Web. Nora King, you and the RMC staff are the best storytellers in the world. You could get out a tape, put in a cassette, get it transcribed and edited. Take your own photos. I will be happy to scan these into our web at New Mexico State, until you get funding to have your own scanner, web connections, and server space to store your history. New Mexico has a scanner; I can get photos on the Web at no cost to you or the NGRMC.

E.g. November 6, 1992 Inter-Office NGRMC Memo from me to Ms. Nora King "Tutoing Program. Monday is the College of Education, department meetings about offering course credit (or not) to LMU education majors who would be tutors at Nickerson Gardens." It was a no vote, so we decided to go to the students and faculty. There is there the story of Sursum Corda founding and above it a an article by Professor Judith White explaining the founding of what Dr. White lists as "the Nickerson Gardens Tutoring Program." It lists the number of Professor Herbert Medina of the math department of LMU, who was one of the original tutors and with Judith White (College of Business), and myself got the program initiated. I will ask Professor Viki Graf, who went around to the schools (see below) if the schools are still doing this. I recall bringing this issue of the Loyola to the Sursum Corda president and meetings at asking if they would take up the "Nickerson Gardens" tutoring program as a service project. And they did, but may now have forgotten its founding or that it was Ms. Nora King and her NGRMC board that got it going and Ms. Pam Griffin and her NGRMC board came to the campus to recruit students. I have a letter dated November 11, 1992 to Father Koppes, S.J. Dean of School of Education from Nora King. It reads "I write to attempt to come in agreement with respect to the participation of Loyola Marymount University students in the Tutoring project which has previously been discussed with you. If you agree we could seek to recruit the students now, so that the project could begin in January, 1993. There is also a proposal for "Focus LA (LMU professors meeting to do things in the community) and Sursum Corda Tutoring Program at Nickerson Gardens dated 11/30/1992. It details some of the history (Dual Management Workbook, 1992 Appendix, copyright NGRMC). It mentions LMU Professor Vicki Graf of the Education College, who went to every single elementary and middle school around NG, explained the program, and invited principals and counselors to send students to the Nickerson Gardens Tutoring Program. This was in Fall of 1992, and I recall going to these same schools with RMC staff and board members to make this same appeal. The plan called for three five-person teams. Tutors were to be trained at the NGRMC by its board. END STORYLINE

• The Internet is taking your Stories Away by Fragmenting Them. I do not think it is conspiracy by Popular Mechanics (1997) or the University. I do not think people intend it (though Popular Mechanics seems to favor the War Machine). My academic work on institutions and power, tells me this: what they do is appropriate or plain ignore the grassroots empowerment "Success Stories" of Nickerson RMC, rewriting them as their own and conveniently forgetting to tell your side of the story. And, as institutions do, they tell just a fragment of a story of Nickerson Gardens. And hundreds of these fragments circulate on the Internet. For example, LMU has on its web sites several press releases, campus programs, and initiatives, each mentioning "Nickerson Gardens." Before you alert them make sure you save them onto your own computers, because they may take them off the web at first sign of protest. Here is one web document I read, and the story implies incidents at Nickerson Gardens, that need your side of the story:
• The students are Darin Nellis and Lee Scott, at Nickerson, and Gene Smith at Mar Vista. --- Darrin Nellis (First Peace Corps Fellow recruited by LMU) reported in 1995, he was shocked by the violence in Watts -- four people he has worked with are now dead from gunshots (Source LMU Press Release, May 31, 1995).
• Analysis: Did the shootings occur? Why feature this aspect of the story "shocked by the violence in Watts?" Surely there are other sides to the story. This is only one fragment. Where is the mention of the NG-RMC the original authors of the grant to bring the "First Peace Corps Fellow recruited by LMU?" What about stories about the life and joy in Nickerson. What About Lula Washington who lived in Nickerson, went to UCLA, and is a successful artist (Source Resume, 1994-5).

Lula Lula Washington and her Dance Theater Company return to NG for performances. One was the 1991 groundbreaking ceremony for the Sage Child Care Center in NG with its Crystal Stairs programs for children. This is where the current LMU tutors go to do their tutoring. ENDSTORYLINE

• Or, Hameed Washington who lived at Nickerson and now is an actor in Theater of the Oppressed in New York (Resume). You could tell these and other stories that are left silent, between the lines of fragmented-stories of Nickerson Gardens in institutional web site documents. What if their art was displayed at the Academy of Management, would 6,000 people walk away with a different image of Nickerson Gardens?

 
Dear Nora and the Board, here is one that is a little less obvious

Analysis: "What I see, even a year after the signing of NGRMC letters of agreement with the University:" There is a missing partner, the NGRMC. Why are you missing in most LMU stories? You have contracts somewhere that could be put on the web. You could educate Universities (there are also UCLA's Urban Planning Project, USC's web site about computer labs at NG, and a FIPSE higher education grant Mount St. Mary's College).

All these sites are telling your stories and getting funded too. Please help them understand the damage to "resident empowered initiative" that such statements do, when the very existence of the RMC=NG and people like Ms. Nora King are left out of the stories.

Here is an exception, a wonderful document, still on the LMU web site:

Nora and RMC Board, what if you told the missing history:

Peace Corps Story Henry Fernandez, Director of Peace Corps Fellows.USA Program and Gary Ballinger and Yolanda McPhail of HUD had sent 3,400 local Housing Authorities, Indian Housing Authorities, and RMCs a one page fax from HUD/Peace Corps Fellows Program that funds for placing Returned Peace Corps Fellows (RPCVs) in public housing might be available. She said to me that she wanted the program at NGRMC. The proposal I researched was initiated by the NGRMC without LMU endorsement in late 1991. That first 7 page proposal requisition $257,966 for the "Ignatius-Nickerson Partnership: Empowering the People" was dated January 6, 1992. The first letter form Nora King went to Dr. Jabbra, the AVP, dated November 11, 1992, asked LMU to partner with NGRMC. November 24, 1992 Dr. Jabbra responded "What a great idea!" in writing and said "I am writing to confirm that I personally endorse your excellent project and would be delighted to discuss it with you further with the hope of reaching a mutually acceptable agreement" (Letter November 24, 1992). Dr. Jabbra authorized the LMU grants office to help write a fundable proposal. NGRMC also asked Ms. Kira Criag President of Black Students Union of LMU for support of the partnership (dated November 12, 1992). On August 4, 1993 and agreement was signed between NGRMC, Loyola Marymount University, the Peace Corps Fellows Program, and HACLA. It was titled the "Ignatius-Nickerson partnership" named after two founders Ignatiius Loyola and William Nickerson Jr. It was the first Peace Corps site in the U.S. to focus on small enterprise development in public housing. The Knight Ridder Foundations awared $175,000 to start the program. MBA tuition got much of this money at $26,730 per student.

This has just been a brief sample of what floats in web space about Nickerson Gardens. Before moving to recommendations and motions, I want to say that we Academics, we scientists of the university, also tell Nickerson stories. For example, my own Boje resume has three papers I have published about Nickerson Gardens. And, someone in my field, a professor Peter McClaren at UCLA tells Nickerson stories, and they circulate on the web:

And, as you know, there has been a move by Dr. Peter Krendt, who told a Nickerson story and got a grant from the National Institutes of Health and center for Disease Control and Prevention and " Residents of the Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens housing projects in Watts, along with other poor people considered to be at high risk for HIV infection, participated in the testing program" but the testing stopped when LA County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke stepped in and said "she is worried that the subjects could become 'human guinea pigs.' ("Scholarships offered for the 12^th Aids conference in Geneva." Feb. 8, 1998, last modified April 18, 1998). Nickerson stories matter.

FINAL Summary Recommendations for Phase One Strategies

1. Set up a Web to list your own founding stories of each program. Telling if it is a contract, who initiated it, and how, if at all, the community is evaluating it. I can help do this. I have a site at New Mexico State University. I put together a web site with some photos I collected to give another side to Nickerson Stories to give you an idea of what an NGRMC site might look like. I know people (and you do too) who will volunteer to do training, to get your own web sites hooked up. I will fly there at my expense. Our Academy of Management has a "service learning" web site, as well. Set up your own web site is my recommendation to the RMC board.
2. Set up a meeting with the University Presidents. Have them come to you, if possible. Tell them to appoint a committee, with you on it, to look at how the stories told on Web Sites, speeches, in News accounts, and University reports to Alumni, students and accrediting bodies portrays NG-RMC as either EMPOWERED or DISEMPOWERED. For example, on the web is this speech with a story about you "Nickerson Gardens - those children cannot imagine a health insurance project. They cannot imagine applying to go to college. They cannot imagine a job. We spend on them to go to high school $5,000 a year but the downtown jail $34,000 a year (Jesse Jackson speech, July 14, 1992, New York). Yet, I know there is Nora's side of this story, of her boys who went to college, graduated, and are each successful in their field. He did not know about resident Lula Washington graduating UCLA (Source Resume, 1994-5). Invite the (past, present, and future) Presidents of the Academy of Management organization, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Professor David Whetten of Brigham Young University, Professor Jean Bartuneck of Boston College, and Professor Jone Pierce of UC-Irvine.
3. Set up A Press Conference and Invite Popular Mechanics and College Presidents Tell them that using "project" in their releases and web documents, not including your side of the story, is politically incorrect and offensive to your empowerment. Stress you are about community and relations in the Gardens, not some project. Tell the stories, we know, that NG did not riot and loot after the verdict. Ask why this side of the story was not told. Ask for magazine space to tell your side. Invite Professors David Boje (NMSU), Steven Best (UTEP), and Douglas Kellner (UCLA) to respond. We study media storytelling and ways it creates the War Machine frenzy.
4. Use the Web yourself to explain that to be written out of history is a long term societal issue that is part of the unseen, unspoken oppression, call it "tacit oppression." May I have your permission to contact Professor Douglas Kellner, Chair of Philosophy and Education at UCLA. He is an expert on media and its use of your culture. Also, my friend Professor Steven Best at University of Texas, El Paso. I am sure they will volunteer - at no cost to you - to give advice. Kellner may have students to send to work with you to help get the Web started until Microsoft sends some help also.
5. Ask for commitment to linking any story of NG that Universities or Academy or Popular Mechanics (1997) tell in the future to your NG-RMC websites, where your side of the story can be read too. Universities, government agencies, and media all have web sites that discuss Nickerson Gardens. If the table was turned, these institutions and media-businesses would certainly expect others to link to their web sites, to get their side.
6. Ask for evaluation research on our Service Learning and Partnering results at NG. Compare NGRMC/University partnerships and NGRMC/Peace Corps partnerships with the results, and then with newspaper and magazine reports I see on the web that say, for example, (in Education coverage) Nickerson Children come to school hungry and teachers have to feed them, they are blurry eyed from watching TV all night, etc (Pyle & Smith, LA Times, May 19, 1998, also at second site with photos). Tutoring (and other Service Learning) is supposed to affect that. Perhaps it is and that story is just not getting told. Call for an evaluation study on what school administrators and teachers are storying in the press, that is slanted or disempowering to NG because it does not get your side and does not ask the same questions of the communities they live in (it is a societal issue). Invite the LA Times and community press too.
7. Re-New Letters of Agreement with Universities and Peace Corps Ask for a press conference where the Presidents sign a new letter of intent to do tutoring and Peace Corps fellows in cooperation with the NGRMC. Get some of your celebrity contacts in the Federal and State government to attend and sign as witness.
8. Commission Community Focus Groups, Art and Story writing for the NG-RMC Websites. This can be material to put up on your web site. I have put some examples on my web site at New Mexico. Explain how stories of your disempowerment are being used by agencies and other universities to get grants and accreditation and to raise funds, but that way of telling just one side, keeps the funds out of the hands of their partner, the RMC and NG. Let me know if the material I have on the web is telling the story straight.
9. A Letter of Agreement between Professor Boje and the NG-RMC Board. Finally, I would like to propose that you give me a letter inviting me to be a "storytelling consultant" to the RMC. I will work for One Dollar each year and be accountable to the Board. I will fly there to present myself to the board.

That letter is valuable to me. I have a heaven-sent opportunity. I am on a temporary task force (to create a permanent task force and I may or may not be on that one) for the 6,000 member Academy of Management, to which every Business College in the world belongs. Their last president is David Whetten (my former dissertation chair at the University of Illinois where I received my Ph.D.). The Academy and Dr. Whetten intends to push "Service Learning" i.e. business course doing service learning. Imagine business partnering with NGRMC. We each have important stories to tell about a long-term history of a Business College working in partnership with NG-RMC, and my own partnering with Nora King and the NGRMC. For example, the help you at NG-RMC provided to my management class at Loyola Marymount since 1990. You know Professor Grace Ann Rosile's also writes about the importance of grassroots empowerment in Business Colleges doing service learning. There is a history here, of how the NGRMC got my students to do Halloween parades at NG, well before any tutoring contracts were made and before Loyola Marymount University's tutoring at NG was born.

Simple service learning activities (e.g. students from classes doing volunteer work) like these are now labeled and defined as "service learning" in Business Colleges (and all other colleges with Higher Education in Washington are pushing for more service learning). There is grant money there for NG-RMC to apply for, to request evaluation studies. And Service Learning is a big deal in the Academy of Management, and in all of Higher Education, and will get increased media attention. There are funding agencies of the Federal government and our country's President and Vice President (as I understand it) is pushing service learning in Business Colleges and Business everywhere to work with the "poor" of America, and that means to you. Especially at NGRMC, since I do not have to tell you, NG is the biggest public housing development west of the Mississippi, and the one where Presidents and all manner of celebrity come to get their speech photos and press releases while shaking hands with you. In short your stories are valuable, worth money to institutions, to elections, and you can use the Internet to educate institutions, using storytelling, to understand the difference between stories that empower versus those that disempower resident action.

Final Summary Recommendations for Phase Two Strategies: Regarding Nora's Letter to Bill Gates. Nora, you have already asked the richest man on the planet, Bill Gates, to make an investment in resident corporate initiative (NGRMC) and seed (empowerment) by getting NGRMC on the worldwide web. I would like to make a motion that the NGRMC name the Web Site, something like "Nora's way of Service Learning" at NG site or something else. I volunteer my own Web Site until yours is implemented, Second that you initiate a Bill Gates letter writing campaign. Third, Nora, I request permission to put your first letter to Bill Gates on the web. We can then ask others in the NG community and working with the community to write letters of appeal to Bill Gates you can also put onto the Web. This web site would ask for Internet hookup from Microsoft and for an answer to Nora King's letter. Fourth, I motion that Bill Gate be requested to invest in small web-site-business-incubation at NG and in NGRMC electronic commerce (e-commerce is for example, putting stuff made in the community onto the web for sale). Fifth, I motion press releases be written how NGRMC is initiating its own Web Site RMC owns and operates for e-commerce and to tell your side of media stories. Finally, once you have Bill Gates attention, I motion you place letters on your NGRMC web site to Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Intel, Hewlett Packard, Dell, and Compact. But, for now, I suggest keeping focus on where you sent the first letter. Eventually, your Web Site will draw attention (and your meetings with University Presidents); the word will get to Bill Gates that the RMC of Nickerson Gardens wants an economic partner in e-commerce. The new service learning initiatives have Business as a partner to your community.

Here is what I recall Nora King telling me on August 16, 1999 that she wanted in such an initiative:

My Summary: In Nora's way of service learning, what university, business, and agencies can do has three actions.

 Acton 1: Put a computer in every public housing unit, take people here into the year 2,000. Not just computers but Internet connections and software to help residents access the wide world beyond Nickerson Gardens.

 Action 2: Build long-term cooperative partnerships with Universities like UCLA, Loyola Marymount, St. Mary's, and USC. Each has web documents touting their initiatives at Nickerson.

Action 3: Get out the Good News Stories - Put out the "real" story of what good the mothers and children, and fathers too, and NG-RMC do that is good, positive, wholesome, to make your lives work, to make this a community that helps others (e.g. the story of the RMC picnic to feed the homeless, etc.).

Action 4: Invite Bill Gates and Professor Michael Porter to come to RMC and invest in a corporation founded of the people by the people for the people of Nickerson Gardens, the Residents' Corporation, the RMC. Professor Michael Porter draws coverage, he has a Business Initiative to work with Inner Cities. Nora King, did you know Clearing House For Volunteer Accountants lists NGRMC (See CVA Clearinghouse Web Site) as a place where volunteer accounting is done. What is your side of this story?

Action 5: Authorize one Professor David Boje's web site (New Mexico State University provides me space on its servers), to get the stories told now, to start inviting a new type of Nora's Way volunteerism by Academics, Business, and Universities to partner in the community that is based on Nora's Way of doing grass roots, empowered Service Learning. It is the Mothers of Nickerson Gardens' way of empowering community action and small web-site-business-incubation at NG.
 

Since I propose to work for the Board ($1 a year), you can supervise, monitor, and put your own stories on that site until you get your own (then link to it). Do this and I can go the Academy of Management and the Business Community and respectfully request that greater attention be paid to the communities being served, emphasizing resident, community empowered participation. So let's get our NG-RMC story told, including my own small, but to me, very important role (one that continues to shape my identity as a professional scholar). I need NG-RMC permission to tell my side of the stories, in ways outlined here, that I hope "do no harm" and even point out what empowerment is. You see when I tell my story, you are characters, heroes in the story, so I need your permission. So let's tell some stories and analyze stories being told by others' web sites.

Action Six: Did you know the CDC (Community Development Corporation) did a nationwide oral history project and I could not find Nora King's work or the NGRMC work on the collection of oral histories.

CDC Oral History Project - Chicago contains community empowerment initiatives in Chicago. There are important parallels between Saul Alinsky and Ted Watkins. Both used union people to train the youth. Both involved senior and other citizens in grass root organizing to make communities safe.

The histories are on the CDC web, being studied by students, faculty and future organizers as examples of what works. You have a story of what works. You could make a RMC Board motion to request an oral history grant to get on that web site and tell your story along side Saul Alinsky, Ted Watkins, and many others. In the meantime getting your own site gives you a place to get your own NG-RMC oral history project circulating. If the CDC writes the history, they also write the future of resident management.

Here is a listing of CDC - oral histories done around the World now on the Web.

Again, I found some oral history on Ted Watkins, but nothing on your work and our work together.

Action Seven: Motion to put this flier on the web. I pulled out a flier I saved from 1992. I think you will remember it. I know Lisa Sprinkles, Jannetta Harvey, and I typed and re-typed it. It was before the transition between Nora King to Pam Griffin's board, but while you Nora King were still on the newly elected board, as I recall. You will need to obtain permission for WTCAC and W-NAACP to put their flier on the web. And tell an untold story of how this, as I recall, was and initiative requested by NG residents, and endorsed by NG-RMC to get corporations owning Liquor Stores to not have some many surrounding the Garden, to start other types of business. The language captures taking back your community in acts of self-empowerment and grassroots organizing:

DATE: SEPTEMBER 9, 1992 -TIME: 7:00 P.M.

From: The Watts Towers Community Action Council (WTCAC) and the Watts NAACP

The residents of Watts want to send the message to Mayor Bradley, Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, the City Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and the owners of Food-4-Less and Boys that business will not be as usual---it is time the residents of Watts determine the building of a stronger community and time for the residents of Watts to play the major role in the economic development in Watts. (Underlining was in original copy)
 

I would like NGRMC permission to put this empowered story on the New Mexico State web site, with your side of the story, so I can translate it as another story to the Business Schools, Academy, and Corporations. For example, In our strange Academic language this flier translates to:

I say less disempowered service learning, more educating universities about the power and harm of the stories they tell about NG-RMC, more building of a strong community, more community organizing, and now with the help of the World Wide Web more business organizing and start NG-RMC E-Commerce (sell your story and your crafts and services on the web). Your story has worth.

On August 20, 1992, the NGRMC submitted a proposal to Housing Authority City of Los Angeles (HACLA and its CEO Joseph Shuldiner) for NGRMC to be a subcontractor of "all management and maintenance functions with HACLA). After 3 months of negotiation between HACLA and NGRMC a formal contract was signed December 4, 1992 for Dual Management. The contract for $104,056 allowed NGRMC to hire and then subcontract two gardener-caretakers, one residence cleaner, and one clerk typist. The NGRMC organized its first Dual Management Workshop to screen, assess, and train NG residents for these positions Twelve graduated and seven stared work for the NGRMC on January 4, 1993. On May 2nd, 1994 the second workshop was conducted and the contract expanded to an eight position with a $140,434 contract. This position went to Janetta Harvey to coordinate the payroll, training, and performance evaluations, who worked with Dual Management since its inception. This training was done on the campus of Loyola Marymount and included over 50 residents of public housing. The trainers were members of NGRMC and several volunteering faculty, an MBA leadership class, and a number of undergraduates who translated materials into Spanish. Ten professors from the College of Business did assessment interviews and made recommendations for who would get the next jobs and who would be best to work with to develop small business start-ups in the community. According to an LMU press release dated (May 27, 1994) "50 residents of Nickerson Gardens in Watts and 12 residents of Mar Vista Gardens in Mar Vista" concluded their workshops with a "formal cap and gown graduation at 4:45 P.M. June 3 in the Bird Nest at LMU." END STORYLINE

Thank you for the privilege of working with the RMC these years. On 18 August 1999 I am met and counseled with my Pastor Bonnie Daily and asked for spiritual guidance. She told me there are churches in Los Angeles that would like to get involved. In fact, did you know World Impact has a web site telling how they planted at church in Nickerson Gardens (Source: World Impact, March 29, 1999)? I mention this because perhaps you have another side of this story, and since in Business Education and the Academy, of which I am a member, there are more and more sessions about spirit at work and spirit in service learning. Any you and I know another story, that we prayed over every initiative and made "Believing We Will Make It" the focus of Dual Management (partnering NGRMC with Housing Authority of Los Angeles). It comes, as you well know from Philippians 1:5 "He [God] who has begun a good work in you will complete it." Nora King, I recall those words of yours at the first Dual Management Workshop conducted at NGRMC, in the corporate offices of the community. I am glad to be a part of the residents' corporation. Tell your story, and please include your spiritual philosophy of non-violence, of making your community safe, and helping residents to find success.

Sincerely,
 

David Boje
Professor of Management
New Mexico State University