The New Party s strategy is clear build an independent electoral coalition of progressive organizations and individuals, develop an issue-based program, work at the municipal level, recruit strong candidates, win elections, and then start the difficult process of enacting progressive housing, economic, and environmental policies into law. The Little Rock New Party has built its electoral coalition to start changing destructive trends in central-city neighborhoods and address planning and growth issues. In working to save central-city housing stock, the Little Rock New Party has made responsible growth a major plank in its platform since the organization s inception in 1992. University Avenue, which have lost more than 6,000 houses over the last 30 years. Businesses are relocating from the area and moving to new whiter and wealthier suburbs built on previously undeveloped land that is continually being annexed to the city by a developer-controlled city board.
Older neighborhoods suffer from redlining by banks and insurance companies.
The unchecked annexation policy shifts tax dollars from older neighborhoods to pay for water, sewer, police, and fire services for these new subdivisions and creates further racial housing segregation in the city famous for the Central High School school integration fight of 1957. None of this so-called growth has led to an increase in the city s population. In August 1995 New Party City Director Gloria Wilson delivered a major speech to her fellow directors and a packed city council chamber on behalf of the New Party in which she called for a reevaluation of existing city policy on land annexations and for real city planning. Each fall, the New Party elections committee interviewed candidates for appointment to the City Planning Commission and made recommendations to the City Board a first for the city and eventually saw two of them appointed. In November the Little Rock New Party released a study exposing the pernicious influence of developer campaign contributions on city politics.