SCOC Increases Its Base, Adds Churches, Union

Fifteen churches and a Compton labor union local were enrolled as members of the South-Central Organizing Committee on Thursday evening as the organization moved to increase participation by blacks and Protestants.

Staff organizer Larry Fondation said the additions mean that the grass-roots lobbying and community action organization is spreading its base beyond the boundaries of South-Central Los Angeles into Compton and drawing more black church figures.

Among those added during the committee’s semiannual assembly at the Los Angeles Convention Center were five Christian Methodist Episcopal churches, Pilgrim’s Hope Baptist Church, the Martin Temple African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Athearn Local of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.

The group in recent years has had more than 40,000 members from about two dozen churches. It was formed in 1979 by a few Catholic priests, nuns and lay people trained as community activists by the Industrial Areas Foundation, established by the late Saul Alinsky, a Chicago neighborhood organizer. The local group was financed initially by largely Catholic parishioners in the South-Central Los Angeles area to address persistent problems of poverty and political powerlessness.