MORE THAN 500 people showed up Saturday morning for the start of the San Francisco Peoples' Organization founding convention, which is impressive – and a lot of them stuck around, which is even more so. By midafternoon there were still several hundred on hand, attending workshops on civil rights, neighborhood planning, violence prevention, and immigrant issues. It's impossible for any group to claim it represents the entire broad and often fractious spectrum of the San Francisco left, but the attendance was pretty impressive: Young political newcomers energized by the Matt Gonzalez mayoral campaign, veterans of decades of city planning wars, radicals, labor activists, Democrats, Greens, small-business people, straight people, queer people, a fair number of people of color, even a few religious types ... and you got the distinct impression they were all there to work.

Consider a snapshot of what was going on early in the afternoon. Sharon Hewitt, the feisty Hunters Point activist, was promoting an agenda for keeping black kids from dying on the street. "This is the most important thing going on at this conference," she told the Bay Guardian. Across the hall, civil rights lawyer Renee Saucedo was leading a discussion on how San Franciscans can fight to protect the rights of immigrants, and Debra Walker, an artist and land-use activist, was helping some 50 urban environmentalists draw up a program for progressive planning, housing, and transportation.

There were, unfortunately, some people missing, most notably Sup. Tom Ammiano, who is still concerned that the organizers aren't taking queer issues seriously. It's hard to imagine a real progressive movement that doesn't include Ammiano, and one of the first things the SFPO has to do is build the bridges that are needed to bring him aboard.

There are other challenges too. The organization's structure is caucus-based, not issue-based, so the leaders will have to figure out how to attract and involve people who don't see themselves fitting into any of the existing groups (community-based organizations, labor, youth/student, seniors and people with disabilities, women, LGBT, people of color, and people of faith). There's a platform, and a lot of resolutions were passed, but so far much of it is broad and a bit vague; the rhetoric has to be translated into clear, specific action mandates. That's going to be tricky – there's so much to do, so many vitally important issues and causes to take on, but the group's going to have to narrow its focus and pick two or three major campaigns it can handle in the first year.

A few pointers the SFPO board should keep in mind:

• Keep it local. There are all sorts of reasons to fight the Schwarzenegger agenda, and the SFPO should play a role in those battles, but the primary focus has to be on San Francisco.

• Follow the money. No lasting progressive change can happen in this city as long as every constituency group spends half the year fighting for a scrap of the available city resources. Generating another $200 million a year (at least) has to be a central concern. Progressive taxation was the focus of a morning workshop, and that's an excellent start. Public power – a potentially massive source of new city cash – should also be on the top of the agenda.

• Recruit and endorse local candidates, and hold them accountable. The Community College Board is a mess. The school board has problems. The assessor's job is open this fall. There needs to be a real discussion about the 2007 mayoral race.

That's just a start. For now, though, the SFPO is a welcome addition to the landscape, and we're pleased to see strong steps toward creating the kind of citywide coalition San Francisco has needed for so long.