Who ECCO Is

Through ECCO,

our institutions have trained hundreds of members in the arts and skills of leadership in public life through research, action and reflection. Since our first public action on May of 1993, ECCO has developed an impressive track record of change in public life and public policy:

        • the "ECCO law", as it is known in New Haven, has removed liquor
          stores from close proximity to schools;

        • after a successful boycott by ECCO, Kmart agreed to stop selling
          guns at its New Haven superstore;

        • ECCO has identified and shut down scores of prostitution and drug-
          dealing sites over the years most famously the open air drug market
          across from St. Rose elementary school, and the rival drug dealers
          shooting up Rosette Street;

        • ECCO successfully pressured the Omni Hotel at Yale to sign a
         "neutrality agrement" guaranteeing the right of its workers to duscuss
          unionization without fear of intimidation or harassment. Within months,
          the workers formed a union and negotiated their first contract;

        • ECCO's Neighborhood Congregations Athletics (NCA) is a sports
          league formed in 2000 involving scores of parish leaders in coaching
          and mentoring over 100 city children in softball, basketball soccer
          and computer technology;

        • ECCO was instrumental in organizing the Trowbridge Renaissance,
          the citizen group successfully tackling crime and blight in one of
          New Haven's most historic neighborhoods, originally designed by
          leading abolitionists;

        • ECCO wrote and won passage of New Haven's gun ordinance, one
          of the strongest in the country;

        • ECCO led the coalition that passed New Haven's Living Wage Law;

        • ECCO first identified a ring of "flippers" at work in the Hill and Fair
          Haven neighborhoods, since indicted and convicted of mortgage fraud.

        • ECCO's St. Rose of Lima church initiated a parish photo ID campaign,
          signing up over 600 recent immigrants, a precursor to the ID program
          launched by the City of New Haven, and rallied over 1000 people to
          protest the raidsand arrests of undocumented citizens by the federal
          Immigration Customs Enforcement agency;

        • ECCO's Nehemiah housing initiative constructed sixteen units of quality,
          affordable housing in Fair Haven, with construction financing provided by
          our member parishes and denominations.

    What ECCO does:

           ECCO rebuilds neighborhoods, strengthens parishes,
                        and teaches leaders how to exercise
                         responsible, accountable power
                                             in public life.


                 "…you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
                              the restorer of streets to dwell in…"
                                                                                           (Isaiah 58:12)

Our congregations and allied institutions work side by side despite many differences. Hundreds of our leaders learn together: African-American, Latino and white; from Fair Haven, Dixwell, The Hill, Hamden and every neighborhood; Catholic, Congregational, Episcopal, Independent, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal and Unitarian.

Now ECCO faces its greatest challenge: expanding far beyond our present eighteen members to include a wider and more diverse cross section of congregations and denominations, from city and suburb..