Building a Place to Build Community

In addition to providing a meeting place for community activism, 5604 Manor will also serve as a child care facility, featuring a playground in a vast green space that will include community gardens. (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Thursday, May 6, marks the grand opening celebration of 5604 Manor – the unpretentiously named space that organizers hope will become a Northeast-side center for community activism in Austin, to be used as a work, collaboration, and event space for a range of progressive groups. The founding organizations include the Workers Defense Project (Proyecto Defensa Laboral), which supports the interests of immigrant workers, especially in the construction industry; Third Coast Workers for Coop­er­a­tion, which plans to establish workers' co-op businesses in green industries; and the umbrella progressive political organization Third Coast Activist Resource Center. As the project got going last fall, Robert Jensen of the Resource Center (and UT School of Journalism) described it as creating "a space to nurture a progressive community," with the hope that other organizations would come to find it useful as well.

That goal has already borne fruit; the newest tenant is Austin Voices for Education and Youth, which works with the school district on increasing and improving educational opportunities, campus by campus. Amy Aver­ett, founder and co-director of Austin Voices, says she's excited about 5604 Manor becoming an "opportunity for collaboration" among various progressive organizations that regularly work on separate projects but often with overlapping goals. Austin Voices Director of Special Projects Sarah Stone said there's already a "sense of possibility" in the building for various groups working together on "justice and equity issues," and that often people working in different organizations find they have social or personal connections that link them together – "and now we can find ways to work together as well."

Thursday's event, from 6:30 to 9pm, will feature a talk by Chronicle columnist and activist Jim Hightower, along with music by Eliza Gilkyson (also among the organizers of the center), Ruthie Foster, and Mitote. Repre­sent­a­tives of the resident organizations will be on hand to discuss their work, and visitors will get a chance to see the potential of the building, which features a performance/educational space in addition to the working offices, what will become a child care area, and the ample grounds. Giving an impromptu thumbnail tour of the site last week, WDP Director Cristina Tzintzún said, "It's a great place for kids, and we plan to have community gardens out here and maybe an occasional outdoor performance."

Acquired in the fall with the help of grants and donations, the building formerly housed a center for the early childhood development program Child Inc. – the site features playground equipment and other evidence of child care. Extensive renovation and cleanup has been accomplished – mostly by WDP members working voluntarily on Sundays, generally their only day off from construction jobs, "so we have plenty of expertise on construction details," said Tzintzún – "and we still plan to make changes as time goes on." She said that aside from painting and general upgrading, some walls have been removed, and there has been improvement to the plumbing and electrical infrastructure, as well as their making certain the building is compliant with Americans With Disabilities Act standards. Late last week, Tzintzún and a small staff were focused on settling in and decorating for the celebration, with the final touches expected last Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the organization's primary work goes on: representing workers' interests. WDP is unique in that it is an immigrant workers' membership organization focused directly on job-related issues. Last week, the group marched in protest on two new, completed developments (the campus-area 21 Rio and Downtown's Gables Park Plaza) for which workers say they were not paid for some their work. According to WDP, a couple dozen workers are owed in excess of $120,000 for work performed on the exteriors of the two buildings, which are major condominium developments. (21 Rio is the site where three construction workers died last June when a faulty scaffold collapsed under them; four contractors were cited for violations by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration but have yet to pay the assessed fines.)

"In a wired world," write the 5604 Manor organizers on the building's new website, "we too easily mistake electronic connections for community. Building the deep connections that come with real community takes more than email and web pages. The connections that can sustain us in our personal and political lives are nurtured in face-to-face conversation and collective efforts to build a better world. Places and spaces for this work are crucial." Tzintzún says she hopes 5604 Manor will become "one of the rare spaces in Austin where progressives, Latino immigrant workers, African-Americans, and local neighborhood residents can come together and have a place to work together."

For more information, visit www.5604manor.org.