Diana Dorn Jones is the executive director of United South Broadway Corporation and for several years has been a most effective community activist in the South Broadway area. She continues to be the constant force that has successfully unified communities and community leaders to stand in the way of those who look to promote laws and actions detrimental to community progress.
Diana grew up in the South Broadway area and has an undying love for the neighborhoods. For the past 18 years, she has played a major role in the progress and development in the area. She is quick to tell you that she is just one of the many individuals who are dedicated to positive change for the area.
She constantly praises her staff and other community leaders for making positive changes for the area neighborhoods. But almost everyone in the South Broadway area will tell you that Diana has been the key player in organizing and the developing efforts to promote community development for the area.
Sometimes it takes an entire village to create change but at times all you need is to plug in is Diana Dorn Jones when you want to organize a community to address issues. Diana and her community development organization, United South Broadway, is currently partnering with the Marguerite Casey Foundation to empower and enrich the voice of local communities.
"The United South Broadway Corporation is receiving funding from the Marguerite Casey Foundation to do movement building, which is a major part of what we do at United South Broadway Corporation. The town hall, we are having today, is designed to create a platform for the people's agenda to end poverty in America. We recognize that we need to organize and collaborate to send a united voice to Washington about the conditions of impoverished families in America. One family can speak up about something, and maybe be ignored but when 10 thousand families speak about this issue from across the country, Washington, in particular, the Congress has to take notice of the disconnect that they have with people on the ground," says Diana.
The town hall that Diana referred to was the community town hall that was held at the South Broadway Cultural Center in April. The well attended community forum provided individuals from communities an opportunity to discuss and document issues related to their concerns. Immigration, fair wages, employment, health care and housing, which Diana identified as being a big issue on the agenda, were only a few of the issues that were highlighted in the community breakout groups.
"We need to tell our elected officials that what you're doing right now, elected official in Washington, DC, is disconnected from what's happening on the ground every single day and making a difference in the survival of families. Right now there is a huge disparity in the gap that continues to expand, between the rich and poor in America. We used to have a middle-class but the housing crisis and the health care crisis has virtually wiped out the middle class in America, and the line now is drawn between the haves and the have-nots, and that really is not acceptable," said Diana.
According to Diana, the town halls similar to the one held in Albuquerque will be going on all over the country. Each organization hosting a town hall will take a hundred individuals from each town hall to one of three regional conferences that are being planned for Los Angeles, Detroit and Birmingham, Alabama. The Marguerite Casey Foundation will be financing the trips for these families and a live video feed will be going out throughout neighborhoods around the country. "We're going to come together and create a larger platform by region that we will then take to Washington and make a testimony before Congress about ending poverty in this country," added Diana.
Diana Dorn Jones has been working on housing issues in communities for a long time and it doesn't look as if she will be finishing her work anytime soon. Diana explains, "I've been working on these issues for a long time because I cannot work in communities and not address issues of poverty because that's what we do, we just happened to have started as a housing organization. We believe that the equity that is built through home ownership is a means of passing wealth to future generations of families, thereby ending generations are poverty. That‘s why I'm beating this drum. "Much of the wealth in this country comes from owning real estate". In my opinion you get a person into a house, they stay and take care of their home, make their payments, and they build equity and then they pass it on to their families, and that is how we built the middle class in this country, and I think that is the way we help our next generation of families get a step up. That is why I am pretty angry about what's going on with the housing market today, they are stripping equity away from families. "Now they are losing their homes to subprime lending practices"."
Diana continued her message for engagement in these words. "These people here tonight are working people who don't have very many resources , and this town Hall is a venue for them to be able to have a voice that we can take from the grassroots level in a small South Broadway neighborhood all the way to Washington, DC and have their voices heard. Just like in a presidential campaign, we are building a platform that is strong because when you have people and communities talking from the same page and having the same message, that's hard for anyone to ignore."
For those unfamiliar with the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the foundation is a major sponsor for community development efforts and it is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The Foundation was created by Casey Family Programs in 2001 and seeks to build a more just and equitable society by nurturing a movement of low-wage families that engages communities across the United States and forwards an agenda that puts families first. The Marguerite Casey Foundation is headed by President and CEO, LuzVega-Marquis, and over the last four the foundation has funded 225 nonprofit organizations in eight regions across the country.
Their partnership with the United South Broadway Corporation was established because of the productive impact United South Broadway Corporation has had working in communities. The Marguerite Casey Foundation doesn't solicit applications but recruits organizations with productive resumes; that is an honorable testament to the effectiveness of the United South Broadway Corporation under the leadership of Mrs. Diana Dorn Jones.