This is the story, in their own words, of how Gale Cincotta, and the National People’s Action (NPA) she founded, battled during for economic justice for five decades, beginning in the 1960s. Based on numerous interviews with those who worked with her, GALE FORCE is the dramatic tale of how this courageous woman fought battles on behalf of every community suffering from financial discrimination.
She identified rampant inequality in entire neighborhoods in Chicago and elsewhere including “redlining” by realtors and bankers and diminishing services by schools and city departments. She won battles with Mayor Richard J. Daley and with the State of Illinois before she took on the U.S. Congress. It was the partnership of Gale and Senator William Proxmire that made Congress pass the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977.
Decades before the Occupy Movement of 2011, Gale and her co-conspirator Shel Trapp became masters at documenting root causes and consequences, engaging community leaders in the fight, identifying those with the power to change things, and pursuing them relentlessly.
Gale bothered a lot of people but her methods worked. The issues that motivated Gale are still with us today–just more sophisticated and widespread, spanning the globe. The methods she used remain relevant today. This book is aimed at those wishing to continue to fight.
AUTHORS
Michael Westgate has a unique lens through which to document the work of Gale Cincotta, having worked with her in the 1970s.
He was Assistant Director of the Urban Reinvestment Task Force, charged with helping Chicago find a solution to the problems of real estate lending in that city. Cincotta, too, was searching for a program that might work–essentially an urban lab for the ideas she was promoting. Westgate became an ally in Washington.
Westgate saw, first-hand, neighborhoods in Chicago where unscrupulous businessmen sold coal laced with
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