Luxury high-rises, office buildings and motels threaten the city of Cambridge. Developers, enticed by the enormous profits these projects offer are pushing out low- and middle-income residents of Cambridge and destroying their neighborhoods.

Until recently the developers went largely unchecked. This was in marked contrast to the situation in a number of other cities, notably San Francisco and San Diego, that have passed laws to limit development. Cambridge could do as much.

Over the summer, the Grass Roots Movement (GRO), following the example of these cities, worked out a novel strategy for stopping the developers. GRO held public meetings resulting in a proposed amendment to the Cambridge City Zoning Ordinance. Signatures are now being collected to put this amendment on the ballot in November as an initiative petition. This petition, for the first time, will give the public the decisive voice over all future real estate development.

Early on, GRO recognized the need to deal with the many other problems confronting Cambridge. The issue of big development does not exist in a vacuum. A platform was hammered out for political action on a wide range of problems. This platform centers on five issues basic to the quality of life here in Cambridge:

"controlling" luxury and other high-rise development through a citizen review process and recall provision that will effectively stop all unwanted development;

rehabilitation of existing housing to make decent low- and middle-income units available to more Cambridge citizens;

elected community boards to oversee the police;

an industrial park in Kendall Square to supply blue-collar jobs; and,

most important of all, the replacement of the present city manager with someone who is attuned to the needs of the people of Cambridge and is not tied to traditional political interests.

After setting forth its platform, GRO came up with five candidates in addition to myself: Saundra Graham of Riverside, incumbent city councillor; Mary Amato of Riverside, women's movement activist and community organizer; Paul chase of the model cities area, black activist and leader in the Roberts School community; Frank Fraumeni of East Cambridge, community activist and head of the Model Cities Board; and, John Marcy of Cambridgeport, anti-war activist and recent B.U. student leader.

Cambridge has plenty of political organizations. But the winds of change in national politics have largely bypassed local government. Decisions affecting our lives--rent and housing, development, jobs, the police--are still made almost exclusively by representatives of the traditional political and business interests. This is particularly ironic since so many people in Cambridge are liberal or radical, but few have become involved with local affairs.

As a result, Cambridge has seen liberal majorities on the City Council and the School Committee disappear before the many difficult problems facing the city--stopping developers, dealing with the police, making rent control work for the people of Cambridge and not for the absentee landlords, and getting decent housing and jobs.

Tied in with the failure of the liberal majority is the absence of any political group representing mid-Cambridge of the minorities. Nor is there any group actively trying to change the economic system by using the political structure on the local level.

Political organizing is a means of strengthening community organizing. The political process ought not to be left by default to the first comer. Communities can control political power well before they can hope to control economic power. But by getting political power we can begin to bring economic power back to everyone in the neighborhoods.

A striking example of where political power has been used against the neighborhoods of Cambridge lies in the case with which developers have been able to put up high-rises throughout the city. Luxury high-rises earn enormous profits that are augmented by paying less in taxes than the cost of the municipal services they receive. The citizens of Cambridge make up the difference. These profits encourage other developers to displace more and more long-time, low-and middle-income residents to make way for more development.