CR Note: We have been warning of this trend for about the last year and now we find it creeping into backyards everywhere. The connections between these groups and the mideast riots are becoming clearer as a sameness of goals does coexist between Islamists and the Communists (for now).

QCityMetro.com & The Charlotte Observer

A liberal activist group based in Washington, D.C., is working to establish a beachhead in Charlotte.

Members of the Center for Community Change have been meeting with local pastors, community leaders and grass-roots organizations since January, they told an audience earlier this week.

The goal, CCC members said, is to mobilize Charlotte's low- and middle-income families in a push for economic change, including a political drive for more regulation of big banks.

"We've been having a number of conversations in Charlotte," Evonne Tisdale, the group's economic justice coordinator, told Qcitymetro.com. "... We want to have an understanding of whether there is an interest among the citizens of Charlotte to call for and demand the change that is needed."

Tisdale said the group's efforts would include voter registration as well as community organizing and political lobbying.

Tisdale said the group is "firmly committed" to establishing operations in Charlotte, primarily because of the city's status as a financial center.

Founded in 1968 to honor Robert F. Kennedy, the group has about 77 staffers in eight cities, including Philadelphia; Chicago; Charlottesville, Va.; Butte, Mont.; New York; Los Angeles and San Francisco. It has previously done community organizing in Raleigh and Wilmington.

Below is an edited Q&A based on a Qcitymetro.com interview with Tisdale:

Q. Tell me in simple terms what you organization seeks to do in Charlotte.

We will be organizing the community to stand up and resist the powers that be, those who control our destiny, our ability to sustain ourselves economically. We need people to have a voice in decisions that actually impact their lives. The reason we have high unemployment here is that ... there are those who have begun to put profit over people.

Q. So who are these "powers that be?"

If you look at how this current recession started, it started because the banking industry in this county decided they wanted to be greedy. They decided they were going to create what we call "asset bubbles," which really is a smoke-and-mirror game where they were transferring people's mortgages - basically, people's lives - from bank to bank to bank to bank. And as a result of that, they crashed the financial system in this country when they were unable to pay out on these mortgages.

Q. So you're going to organize people against the banks?

I would say the banks are the root cause of the problem, but it's a little bit bigger than that. It's about how the entire financial system is structured in this county; it's the way businesses and corporations have been allowed to operate in this country. So what we're really looking to do is change how businesses operate, how they are regulated. They have been allowed to just come into our communities and cities and decide how people are able to sustain themselves.

Q. These are complex topics. How can your organization change how banks and businesses are regulated?

The way anything in this country is regulated is through legislation and policy. We have to demand that our legislators and politicians regulate the system. There is a role for government in this, and there is a role for us in this. Our role is ensuring that our government invests in us and makes sure companies and businesses in our communities invest in us.

Qcitymetro.com is a partner in the Observer's Charlotte News Network.