Institute for Social Science Research

This paper is a reflection on several years' struggle to establish a federation of housing cooperatives in a low-income, multi-ethnic, bilingual community in Los Angeles. The history of this organization has significant implications for the study of multicultural organization in general, and for the modeling of multicultural, as opposed to assimilative or pluralistic, society. The concept of multiculturalism has grown in importance as the melting pot myths of the past and shortcomings of pluralism are fully exposed.