“People Power” in San Francisco’s Mission District

This was the first I’d heard of the MCO, and would often hear the activist’s comments echoed by others. Now, Mike Miller, who was staff director of MCO during its 1969-71 heyday, has written A Community Organizer’s Tale, a book that chronicles MCO’s success, and its all too soon demise. Miller raises important questions about the impact of nonprofits on community advocacy, the role of public money in stifling dissent, and the challenge of maintaining a broad-based “peoples” organization when the “people” it seeks to represent have profoundly conflicting interests.

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