COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

were to be the main participants in the Women’s Needs Assessment Study. Each woman
would be surveyed about what resources they believed women in Oak Park needed and a
documentary film would be created. In addition, the women worked on other projects,
such as participating in a workshop to learn how to apply for First 5 grants, which were
specifically available for projects for women and children under five years of age. In
sum, the Women’s Group believed that women and children in Oak Park needed
resources in the community and focused their efforts on working to provide services for
them.
Traditionally, women’s community-based activities have historically involved
unpaid work in churches, schools, child-care programs, hospitals, and recreation centers
(Naples 1992:442). This work was focused on helping the poor “inside” the system. But
now, rather than focusing on the distribution of resources or the ownership of production,
people are demanding that the state take action to ameliorate conditions (Susser
1986:114). Women are thus organizing and mobilizing communities and are demanding
action, equality, and funding from state agencies. They are taking leadership roles and
becoming presidents of local block associations, making speeches, coordinating
demonstrations, organizing food distributions, and confronting politicians—both locally
and nationally (Susser 1986:114).
Labor Association
Lastly, members of a local Oak Park neighborhood Labor Association took a
much less conservative and more “radical activist” stance towards the socio-economic
condition of the neighborhood and attributed social problems in the neighborhood as
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