On my morning commute to the office, I walk through the skywalk at the Bandra Station and get a view of the slums that Anil is organizing in. On one side is a vast field of green “bhaji” or vegetables being grown by who live next to the water pipelines. On the other side is the slum that recently burnt down. The stench is unbearable and the site of men shitting in the dirt field by the station is not something anyone wants to see at anytime of day. Below I can see people relaxing, office workers trying to get to their destinations, the attorneys hanging outside the small courts building, and many people sleeping/drying their clothes/eating on the sidewalk. Since the fire, most of the people displaced from the burnt shelters have set up their “homes” on the sidewalk. High profile politicians with noisy sirens and heavy-duty police protection have come and gone. The most that I have seen done is a few water tankers pull in, a couple of temporary shacks set up as public restrooms, and seen food being handed out. I have heard from residents that they will not let news channels, tourists wanting to take pictures, or developers in. This is because they want to know what they are going to do for shelter for the victims of the fire first. I do not understand why news cameras are not being allowed in, as media could be really helpful to get their demands known—but this is just what I have heard from a few of the residents.

No matter the conditions, I have decided to visit the slums at least twice a week; to keep track of Anil’s organizing drive. I have noticed that the more often I go to the slums, the less the people think of me as an organizer and more as a leader. It is clear that the members of ACORN and the residents, in general, have not have had many NGOs or groups come in with a model that is based around member empowerment. I have come across issues that are so immediate and apparent that I feel that two years of organizing in the states were just a fun game. How many people Anil and his members sign up as dues paying members every day is evidence enough for how much the poor are willing to organize and band together. But the hard task is to make the members realize that they have to lead themselves and that no organizer is going to do that for them.

We have started with a committee made up of 11 people chosen by the rest of the members to start doing intensive leadership training. There are only 2 men and 9 women. Most of the committee members are Muslim women and the males are both Mulsim. Not a surprise since most of the slums are made up of Muslim communities. Three non-members interrupted the meeting; two of them turned out to be the people who take bribes from our members to make ration cards and other forms of identification. The non-members were indirectly told several times that this meeting was for members only but of course, they did not leave and tried to derail the meeting—until I lost my cool (Anil was not happy about that). They are excited, ready to work, and fight to delay or even better, stop the demolition of their illegal “bastis” or slum communities. The deadline given to them by the municipal government is at the end of three months. They have a lot of work to do.

Incredible. Thursday, I had too many close calls on emotional and mental break downs. At 11:15 am I met up with Mumbai's field organizer, Anil, at Dadar train station to go to Dharavi. After visiting members in Dharavi (which was enough of an over-whelming experience for one afternoon) , as we crossed the sky walk from the Bandra station, a crowd had gathered on the side that looked over at the slums. I peeked over and heard the man next to me say that the slum had caught fire the night before and the fire brigade had been trying to put out the blaze since 4 in the morning. The fire had started at 2 a.m. People living in the slums had gathered into the field owned by a school next to the slum and had set up tents on the sidewalk. The gutter lines had backed up and the young men were desperately trying to pull out the trash and debris that was blocking the drains. The stench of sewage, the body odor, along with the smog from the fire was too much to bare. Anil and I rushed through to get to the office but as we walked through, people from the slums who knew Anil, stopped and spoke about the fire. It was the same story over and over..."there was a fire, gas cylinders blew up, the firemen showed up late, we can't leave our place on the side walk or someone else will take it over, still trying to find bodies..."

At the office, Vinod, director of India ACORN, indicated that the fire was either an accident or could have been ordered by one of the developers. June 17th was the deadline for people to move out so the community could be grazed for new buildings.

Later, I was invited by Vinod to attend a meeting organized by well-known progressive organizers, architects, professors, former government officials, and city planners, the same issue was brought up. The meeting was about Mumbai government's plan to build low-income housing (keeping in mind the low-income projects in the U.S.). Of course, it was a terrible idea. An intense debate in Marathi, English, and Hindi between the attendees went on for 2 and half hours. The guidelines for building the rental housing were not "inhabitable" and that it was an attempt to push the poor out of the city boundaries, creating slums outside of Mumbai. What was even more outrageous was that part of the government's plan is to cap off the amount of time people can live in the rental housing, which is 5 years, and just hope that within 5 years the renters will have saved enough money to buy property and move out of rental housing. Of course, this is all without any real planning or any pressure to address the issue of lack of jobs and the high cost of living in Mumbai.

7: 30 am, June 18th. Day 2

I have a feeling that my 2nd full day in Bombay, is going to be full of surprises, just as my first day was. Today, I have scheduled a visit to Dharavi to meet the ACORN members. My goal is to gain an understanding of what the members' perceptions are of ACORN, why they joined, and what they hope to gain out of it. After a conversation with Vinod Shetty, India ACORN's director, it seems that for the past 2 years not much has taken place on the community organizing side due to the lack fo training. I mean nothing has happened with community organizing. There is an organizer in the office here who goes into Dharavi everyday and "maintains" ACORN's "social network." This of course, makes me nervous but I have very high hopes for this operation.