Their headquarters is easy to miss – just a plain, one-room office in downtown New Brunswick. But their mission to bring change to the city has made the political establishment sit up and take notice.

A group of Rutgers University students and graduates have brought their brand of social-justice activism off campus and into the streets of New Brunswick, winning seats on a key political committee and starting a movement to change the way city elections are held.

 “We’re community organizers,” said Charles Kratovil, a 2009 graduate. “We think it’s the best way to effect real change – just like when Barack Obama got out of college, he became a community organizer.”

Kratovil and his fellow students are members of Empower Our Neighborhoods – a group that performs a range of social-justice projects and also spawned an offshoot organization, Democrats for Change to mount a direct challenge to the established Democratic Party that dominates New Brunswick politics.

On a recent day, the students sat at desks, huddled over laptops, or milled about their Bayard Street office, working on projects that included planning a city skateboard park and starting a tenants’ rights initiative. Then, at dinnertime, they went knocking on doors in residential neighborhoods.

“We ask people what problems are prevalent in their area,” said Michelle Velasquez, a senior. “We ask them what they’re worried about.”

The students scored something of an upset last June, when Democrats for Change candidates won 25 of the city’s 56 seats on the Middlesex County Democratic Committee – an influential body that runs the county’s Democratic organization.

Committee seats are rarely contested, but Democrats for Change ran a slate of 50 candidates – a coalition of students and older New Brunswick residents – that ran against regular Democrats.

Thirteen of the 25 winners from Democrats for Change are Rutgers students or recent graduates.

Sophomore Stacey Milliman, for example, won in a district that covers most of the dormitories off College Avenue.

She said she’ll use her committee seat to voice student concerns such as parking, and build ties with non-student residents.

“Just walking through New Brunswick and seeing the different areas made me want to get involved in the city,” she said. “The city is so much bigger than just Rutgers. And I don’t think a lot of students realize that.”

Martha Guarnieri, a senior who, along with Kratovil, helped manage the overall campaign, said the challengers used simple but effective techniques to defeat their more established opponents, like going door-to-door in city neighborhoods.

“We didn’t have a ton of money to do mailings,” said Guarnieri, a political science major who spearheaded the Rutgers University Voting Coalition. “The way we ran the campaign was very organic.”

They faced resistance from party regulars.

T.K. Shamy, chair of the New Brunswick Democratic Organization, sought to have 20 Democrats for Change candidates thrown off the ticket before the election, citing a law that requires candidates for political office to maintain residency for one year prior to seeking office.

But a state judge said the law doesn’t apply to internal party positions. And Shamy said he now welcomes the newcomers.

“They got on the committee, and that is fine,” Shamy said in an interview. “They have a lot of energy, which is wonderful. At the end of the day, we are all Democrats and we are all working to advance the Democratic ideals throughout the city, county, and state.”

Empower Our Neighborhoods was formed in 2008 and set out to change the city council elections to a ward, or neighborhood-based, system instead of the current system of electing candidates on an at-large basis. Despite opposition from city officials, the group succeeded in getting a question placed on the November 2009 election ballot that, if approved, would expand the council and revert to a ward system.

“There are studies that show the ward-based system has higher minority representation and allows candidates with less money to get involved,” said junior John Aspray.

The students found common ground with some non-student residents, and that partnership eventually coalesced into the Democrats for Change slate.

“In the course of knocking on every door in the city, we met a lot of allies – a lot of people who are tired of what they have seen here for so many years,” said Kratovil. “Those people started coming to our meetings, and it started growing.”

The coalition-building effort continued through the summer, as students gathered daily at their rough-around-the-edges office on Bayard Street.

Affixed to the walls are large street maps of New Brunswick, with the neighborhoods students have already canvassed marked off in yellow. The students say canvassing neighborhoods is central to their mission and helps them build bonds with non-student residents.

“All the community members we have met have been so supportive of the student movement and of the effort to break down this barrier that has always been there,” Kratovil said. “We believe a uniting of forces would create this powerful force of change.”