By Anthony Ha

The scene at the Ross Dress for Less clothing store on Market Street was quintessential San Francisco: a group of young activists marched their way through the aisles of casual wear, waving signs and chanting, "Seven dollars is not enough! Raise the wage or we'll get tough!"

They demanded that the store manager send a fax to the Ross CEO asking for a raise in the starting wage of its San Francisco workers to $8.50 an hour. For these members of the JusticeCorps program, the demonstration at Ross wasn't just a protest; it was school, the culminating event in a weeklong training program.

Started a year ago by Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, JusticeCorps trains fresh-out-of-college activists and finds them jobs as community organizers.

"I work with a lot of students across the country on sweatshops and housing issues and homelessness, and they graduate, and they have nowhere to work," Shaw said. "So I thought, 'Gee, we're losing all this talent.' You know, we get them all hopped up as activists in college, and yet we lose them."

This year the program brought 14 activists to San Francisco for a week of training that featured talks, practice campaigns, and door-to-door work, as well as the demonstration at Ross, which was cosponsored by the San Francisco branch of Associated Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Earlier this summer JusticeCorps placed its new organizers in positions with housing- and labor-advocacy groups around the country, including the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, Housing California, and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.

According to Shaw, many of the training activities were focused on preparing people for the day-to-day reality of life as an organizer, which often involves long, unglamorous hours of research and working with community members on local campaigns.

"Some campus activists used to being the center of attention become frustrated as community organizers because the work does not put them in the key decision-making role," Shaw said. "Community organizing is the hardest, most time-consuming but most effective counterweight to wealthy and powerful interests.... Many activists spend most of their time speaking to the converted; community organizing brings in the unconverted and thus broadens the base for progressive change."

Organizers who receive positions through JusticeCorps only have to make a one-year commitment, but Shaw said that he looks for people who are interested in exploring community organizing as a career, not just spending a year or two in public service before moving on to something else.

Most of JusticeCorps' organizers who spoke to the Bay Guardian said they were in it for the long haul. Jon Alvarez, a graduate from Notre Dame with a bachelor's degree in anthropology, said he became interested in community organizing and advocacy after working in public service and deciding "service was not real empowerment." As an organizer, Alvarez said he hopes "to build something that lasts."

By the time JusticeCorps training convened in the final week of August, Alvarez had already started working for the Brooklyn housing group Neighbors Helping Neighbors. When asked what attracted him to housing issues, Alvarez said, "It could have been anything. This year I'm doing housing because I got the job. You can take organizing into whatever issue, whatever community you want to."

Lilach Shafir, who recently graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor's degree in international studies, will be going to Florida to work for ACORN, where her training will extend for another six weeks.

"It's a great way to spend a year and have a totally different experience," she said. Shafir, who eventually hopes to work in Latin America, added, "I don't have a specific time limit. I'm just going to put all my energy in it and see what happens."

Shafir is, in fact, one of five JusticeCorps members joining the Florida branch of ACORN. According to Shaw, JusticeCorps did not set out to place so many applicants in that state, but "we kept getting good people who wanted to go there, so we created more openings."

As for why Florida was so popular, Shaw speculated that a major factor was anger at the outcome of the presidential election in 2000. He added that as a conservative state without a tradition of organizing and activism, "Florida desperately needs activists."

Nicholas Graber-Grace, another organizer going to Florida, was more circumspect. He noted that ACORN is a nonpartisan organization that will be directly involved with a statewide campaign to put a minimum-wage initiative on the November 2004 ballot. But he acknowledged, "The presidential election is definitely something that we're conscious of."