Public Employee Press

Fighting the good fight:
From civil rights to human rights

By JANE LaTOUR

Isaac Parsee’s path to public service began in his hometown of Houston, Texas. As a youngster in the 1950s, he questioned the rampant discrimination of the segregated South, like the rule pushing African Americans to the back of a bus. The local amusement park was open to blacks only one day a year — June 19.

He vowed never to enter it. “To this day, I wouldn’t know what it looks like,” he said. At 17, he met the Rev. William Lawson, a local activist who was speaking out on inequality. “I tagged along with him and assisted him in doing his civil rights work,” said Mr. Parsee. They organized sit-ins and boycotts with the students at Texas Southern University, a traditional black college.

Attending college in Wisconsin opened the young man’s eyes. “It was a culture shock,” he explained. “Racial discrimination was there, it just took a different form from in the South.” After college, he joined VISTA — Volunteers In Service To America — and went to work as an organizer in Baltimore, Md. From 1967 to 1969, he worked with community groups and tenants.

In 1969, he moved to Newark, N.J., where his path intersected with Amiri Baraka and other legendary figures and movements of the era, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the campaign to elect the first black mayor of Newark, Kenneth Gibson.

Organizing for change
An encounter with civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer inspired Mr. Parsee to return South, work on her cooperative Freedom Farm in Mississippi, and organize young people. Labeled an “outside agitator,” a term that had led to death in Mississippi, he had to leave the state under cover of night.

The birth of a daughter led to the need for a “real job.” In 1982, Mr. Parsee brought his commitment to social justice and his talent for creative troublemaking to the City Commission on Human Rights. Here he developed an innovative program to address the pervasive problem of predatory lending and mortgage foreclosures in poor communities.

Now, as deputy director of the Queens Community Service Center and director of CCHR’s Mortgage Foreclosure and Pre-Purchase Counseling Program, Mr. Parsee is able to watch the growth of the program he developed, which now has offices in every borough. Despite all of the growth, the problem is bigger. “Folks are squeezed on all levels,” he said. “There are just not enough people to provide services.”

“Over 90 percent of the people facing foreclosure are women,” he explained, “and 75 percent are women of color. Historically in our community, the employment rate has been higher for women, so women are suffering most from the foreclosure issue,” he added. Now CCHR is initiating a new program, starting with the Jamaica-Hollis neighborhood. They’re enlisting the support of the proprietors at places where women congregate, such as beauty salons, laundromats and corner stores. The objective is to engage women in conversation and to provide education that could prevent foreclosures.

Always an activist
Mr. Parsee is an activist in his own neighborhood. He sits on Advisory Board 14 in Far Rockaway. But his newest endeavor has clearly captured his heart. Coach Parsee has three co-ed basketball teams under his tutelage for ages 8-10, 11-14 and 15-19.

“The kids put so much emphasis on winning,” he said. “I try to teach them that what’s important is that you work together. That you work collectively.”

Mr. Parsee is also a union activist. He chairs the Human Rights Specialist Chapter and is an Executive Board member of Amalgamated Professional Employees Local 154. “You are your brother’s keeper,” he said. “Hopefully, I can reach down and inspire some young people, the same way I looked up to Bill Lawson.”