Lobbying for the Nation’s Neediest Citizens

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, terrorists bombed a hotel in the coastal Kenyan city of Mombasa, killing 16 people. Stephanie Robinson, the new national director of public policy at the Center for Community Change, in Washington, weathered a similar situation in the East African country.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1994, she won a fellowship to spend a year working for the country’s Law Society — which functions as both a bar association and an advocacy group — to promote the idea of a national constitution that would create a better judicial system and protect civil rights. While she was there, her offices were bombed twice and the group’s security guard was shot. “I literally saw the growing pains of democracy,” she remembers.

The experience also represented her first foray in a career that has been marked by public service and a concern for the poor and disadvantaged. In her new position, she will be managing the political work of the center, a 30-year-old organization that helps to build and strengthen grass-roots advocacy groups that operate in poverty-ridden neighborhoods around the country.

The Center for Community Change, which has 84 staff members and a $9.4-million budget this year, shows local groups how to press for policy changes that will help the poor. Among its top concerns: increasing the availability of low-cost housing and encouraging police forces to do a better job of patrolling areas where needy people live. It provides money, training, and a clearinghouse of information gained from past experience.

Before coming to the Center for Community Change, Ms. Robinson served as a lawyer on the staff of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. She helped the veteran legislator set the agenda for the committee he chaired on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

In that job, she says, she worked many late nights and weekends, inspired and impressed by a boss who would go home every night and soldier through a towering stack of memos that she and the rest of his staff would put together on health care, welfare, education, and budgetary policy.

Senator Kennedy gave her six months of paid leave to spend time with her son after he was born almost two years ago. She went back to work for another year and a half. But even before the Democrats lost control of the Senate in last month’s election, she decided it was time to move on for good. When the senator asked her why, she joked, “I don’t want to become another Strom Thurmond,” referring to the South Carolina senator who turns 100 this month and will leave office in January after serving for 48 years.

Of course, Ms. Robinson had only been on Capitol Hill for five years. But she told her boss that the Center for Community Change job was hard to pass up.

Ms. Robinson, with her Capitol Hill pedigree, will be working largely with federal policy makers. One issue of particular importance to the center: the extension of the 1996 welfare legislation, which expires on December 31. She says she will take many of her cues about what issues should get priority from the people that the center trains to be advocates in their local neighborhoods.

In her new role, she hopes she will be able to make full use of her passion for helping people through politics. “The center will be here until we eradicate poverty and make the country an equal playing field,” she says. “We have a long way to go, particularly for people who are disenfranchised and people of color.”

In an interview, she discussed her career and her new job:

How do the Republican gains in the midterm elections affect your work?

I don’t think we’ve completely figured that out from a political or strategic viewpoint. It should not change our values, but might change how we go about doing the work. With Republicans setting the agenda, whether it’s foreign policy, or tax cuts, or a kitchen-table domestic agenda, it will determine how we posture ourselves. But the work we do will not change. We will not cede to any political party our ability to represent our constituency.

Since the 1996 welfare legislation, has politics shifted away from your issues?

Not at all. The center did an enormous amount of work to mobilize grass-roots constituents and to equip state governments to address the needs of working poor. It’s fair to say that there’s not one piece of legislation that, based on whether it passes or fails, will dictate our work. The center has been there for 30 years.

Why does the center focus on grass-roots organizations?

Grass-roots organizations represent the people. We allegedly live in a participatory democracy. Politics can’t be a top-down approach. It can’t be people in the Beltway or on Capitol Hill assuming they know how people feel because of polling or focus groups. More people should figure out a conduit between grass-roots and policy. Paul Wellstone [the Minnesota Senator who was killed in a plane crash in October] was a master of this and a friend of mine on Capitol Hill. He was referred to as the “soul of the Senate.” He engaged people out in the country. He did not rely on an intellectual abstraction by the elite about the rest of the country.

What is an example of an organization that the center has supported?

One of the organizations is Acorn [Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now]. Acorn works in neighborhoods, organizing people who live there the same way that labor unions organize workers. It builds voices around affordable housing. Another centerpiece of Acorn’s work is to combat predatory lending. It worked on a living-wage campaign in Baltimore. Working with Acorn, we can help a problem that’s happening in neighborhood X, and community Y, and community Z, bubble up to state or national level.

How do you measure the performance of the Center for Community Change?

Regardless of how anti-corporate we think we are, we are quite corporate in how we measure things. With legislation, we work in a campaign mode: Did we win or did we lose? With field work, we might look at how many states are implementing a given policy, or see how many people are volunteering, or how many times the press mentions our work.

Does being a lawyer matter in your new job?

The training you receive is good preparation for almost any job. Law schools teach attorneys how to think analytically, and linearly, and help them acquire a penchant for detail. Since I will be working on laws and legislation, the training is essential. Also, it doesn’t hurt that there are so many lawyers in D.C. You can sit at the same table with them.

Do you have any plans to run for office?

I don’t know. I enjoy serving the country and serving people who are not spoken for.

I also enjoy the gamesmanship. I will work from here and see what life throws me.

ABOUT STEPHANIE ROBINSON, NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AT THE CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE

Education: Received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, where she majored in political science, and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Previous employment: Spent a year working for Kenya’s Law Society, where she helped the country improve its legal system. She has also worked at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, in Washington. In 1997, she became the top lawyer for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Charitable interests: Sits on the board of National City at Peace, a New York organization that introduces young people nationwide to the performing arts. She also serves as vice president of the board of the African American Museum and Cultural Complex Project, which is planning for a museum on the National Mall in Washington. The project is currently being studied by Congress.

Magazines she reads regularly: Congressional Quarterly, National Journal, Congress Daily, Working Woman, and Parenting.