A meeting Thursday at the Democracy Center, which is closing July 1 in Cambridge‘s Harvard Square. (Photo: Marc Levy)

Information promised about the closing of The Democracy Center meetinghouse was scant at a Thursday meeting between representatives of the Foundation for Civic Leadership and leaders of the organizations who rely on the Harvard Square institution.

Instead, answers came in a statement provided Friday that the organizations would be supplanted by the needs of another FCL program called Democracy House, which focuses on youth leadership.

“Democracy House staff and programs are growing, with the imminent hiring of a permanent executive director and the development of Democracy House programs in process, some of which we expect will be housed in the building, and the building will need to be renovated accordingly,” said the statement by Sue Heilman, interim executive director of Democracy House, and the foundation’s Ian Simmons.

“We hope that in the future the building will again be available for use by community groups, and we will be in touch with you when that happens,”they wrote. “We understand that finding alternative office and meeting space for the existing users of the building will take some time, which is why we are giving nearly three months’ notice.”

The structure’s owners announced Saturday that it would close July 1 for the foreseeable future so they could make “necessary renovations.” 

Until the Friday statement, the nature of the upheaval was unclear as owners only expressed “the hope” that the building would some day “be able to welcome community groups once again” and as Heilman and another foundation representatives at the meeting said they lacked answers to questions from tenants, including that they didn’t know exactly what renovations would be made or the timeline for those repairs.

“Will community groups, etc., be invited back to the space once it’s done? I also 100 percent believe that that is the expectation, the hope, the plan,” Heilman said. But the foundation had always considered the center, which it has owned since 2002, to be “temporary.”

It was only after being contacted later by email that Heilman clarified what she meant by passing along the statement with Simmons. It said that FCL had been “honored to host hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals in our building over the past 22 years, and frankly did not expect to be doing so as long as we have, given the condition of the building and our intention to use it for other programmatic activities eventually.”

“Now the time has finally come … we need to refurbish the building and we have decided to use the building for different purposes,” Heilman and Simmons wrote.

Long but obscure

The morning meeting was held in person at the Democracy Center and on Zoom, the first of two “to answer questions and hear from the community.” While it did feature hours of community input, activists and organizers anxious to know more about the future got next to no new information. Simmons had a scheduling conflict and could not attend, said Heilman and another representative, Dana Green.

In one of a few moments of certainty over two and a half hours, Heilman was able to confirm that renovations would actually take place, and they were not just a ploy to evict activists from the space as some people at the meeting suggested. 

“Yes, [renovations] really are going to happen,” Heilman said. “The timeline of the renovations is not yet determined, because the actual extent of the renovations and how long that might take, and what’s involved, are not completely clear yet either. But they are being worked on, they have already been initially outlined and some things [have] begun to be investigated.” 

More than 75 people attended online and in-person, and dozens of people gave comments about how much the center meant to them and their organizations’ advocacy. Heilman and Green mostly listened quietly, writing on clipboards as the meeting progressed.

Recalling ouster in 2009

Questions and concerns coalesced around a few central demands: a meeting with the FCL’s board, a hold on the orders to leave the space by July and a commitment to more transparency in the decision-making process by the owners of the center. 

“We want a timely meeting no later than two weeks from now with the FCL leadership board,” said Dara Bayer, a co-director of Cambridge Heart, a citizen-led unarmed crisis-response team. “We want to speak directly with decision-makers so that we can express what the Democracy Center means to the community and the good work that is happening here. And there’s very specific questions that we want answers to, because the statement that was put out was incredibly vague.”

Work to find a new location has begun, Heart said in a Friday email, and it hoped to coordinate with other newly homeless organizations to avoid disrupting anyone’s plans. The group was forming a space committee and inviting members to apply. “We already have a number of ideas and have made some preliminary inquiries,” the email said.

Kimberlee, an activist who spoke over Zoom, said the need for renovations at the center weren’t new, and that the current ouster of nonprofits reminded her of how the Papercut Zine Library was uprooted from the center in 2009 and struggled afterward to find a home.

It was only a few years into the ownership by Simmons and his foundation that “we were told that FCL was no longer able to pay the mortgage and the Democracy Center was put on the market. This was after years of the boiler completely malfunctioning, flooding and tons of issues with the house,” Kimberlee said. “We can vacate the space for a month for the boiler to be replaced. There are things that could be done at the Democracy Center whilst people are still here that are not being done have not been done since 2009.”

Important locally and internationally

The tenants also tried to impress upon the representatives how important the Democracy Center was to local activism. 

“When there was an earthquake in Haiti two years ago, we organized out of the Democracy Center and collected donations and shipped food and cleaning supplies and building supplies – we shipped something like six barrels of things to add to the earthquake response and connected with the organizers on the ground there,” said Stephanie Guirand, a founding member of The Black Response. 

The center is also an important international hub, where thousands of migrants from Chile, Guatemala and Haiti have come to collect materials and supplies, Guirand said. “Taking this away is not just going to destabilize the organizing here; it’s going to really destabilize an international movement, where the Democracy Center is just a pin in the work that is connected globally,” she said. 

“We’ll get back to everybody”

The comments would be passed along, Heilman said, followed by “some sort of process internally, and then I assume we’ll get back to everybody with where things stand.”

“I knew this before today but now I know in a much more visceral way, it’s been very important in the community,” Heilman said of the center. “I think that the board also knows that it’s been important to the community. I don’t know how many of them have used it regularly ever – but there is something from their perspective of it sort of always being temporary. And that I’m not sure, you know, was weird, and that’s what’s coming out here. And so I just think I’m gonna just end with that.”

Heilman said, “I know this is very difficult.”

A second hybrid community meeting is scheduled by the foundation for 7 to 9 p.m. Monday.