Our Story
Community First Coalition
History of Community First Coalition
For several years prior to 2012, the City had engaged in a number of questionable and controversial policy decisions, projects and initiatives. Civic activism, outright protests and general discontent had been growing, much of it focused around decisions related to the 2012 bond election and projects; the deceptive language in the bond initiative, the demolition of City Hall to build a downtown baseball park, the threatened demolition of Barrio Duranguito to make way for a sports arena and the decision to create a Mexican American Cultural Center in the existing Main Library.
In this environment at the end of 2018, a group of community-minded activists headed by Dr. Oscar Martinez and Carmen Rodriguez decided to form a coalition of citizen groups in order to respond to and raise public awareness about these issues. Following the model of El Concilio de El Paso from the 1980s, Community First Coalition organized.
The founding organization, El Paso Social Justice Forum, active since 2015, had been organized by Martinez. The Forum sponsored panels and presentations about a variety of social justice topics from the drug war, border walls, and voter suppression to restorative justice and low wages in the region, especially Cd. Juarez, our neighbor city. See http://www.epsocialjustice.org
The coalition’s first major project was to write a book to reveal to the public that these controversial plans and projects, including others, were actually not the vision of our City’s elected representatives, but those of a small group of wealthy private citizens, known as the Paso del Norte Group. This elite group, who stood to profit from the projects, imposed their plans disregarding barrio residents and community needs by convincing city council members that the only way to proceed was by minimizing transparency, that is, keeping the public in the dark and using deceptive language and misrepresentations to accomplish their ends. The book, WHO RULES EL PASO? sets out how the City and the public was manipulated and continues to be controlled by the same group of elites, now often referred to as, local oligarchs.
The coalition established goals, value and mission statements including a list of concerns which would be addressed. Community organizations were invited to join and steering committee and general membership meetings have been held to continue to work towards more transparency, accountability, and inclusiveness in our local government.
