Building Powerful Community Organizations

Voter registration is part of community organizing

BPCO — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:37:53 -0400

This Sunday, MICAH, the organization in Framingham, MA, I organize, will hold a voter registration drive in some of the Town’s precincts that don’t have the voting strength of the more affluent precincts. It is a common American tale. Those without less free time, less money and less formal education tend to vote less often than those with more of the above. Part of our answer are events like the one we will hold this Sunday at St. Tarcisius Church. Lots of food, free T-shirts, and hopefully more registered voters at the end of the day than at the beginning. We were glad to have this article in the Boston Globe, thanks to a contact my wife made at work with an interpreter who free-lances as a Globe stringer in Framingham.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/09/25/voter_sign_up_takes_aim_at_new_citizens_low_income_groups/

Foreclosures and community organizers

BPCO — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:30:33 -0400

My colleague Lew Finfer was asked by Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen about the foreclosure crisis, now that President Bush wants to bail out the financial institutuions that profited from the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. From our congregation-based organizing, we knew of someone who we thought would exemplify the problem, and this column in today’s Boston Globe came about:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/09/25/no_bailout_for_romilda/

From Social Policy, Spring 2008, Review by James Mumm

BPCO — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:16:56 -0400

“Building Powerful Community Organizations is what you get when a wise veteran organizer…gets around to letting the rest of us in on his secret… Brown manages to be both reflective and disciplined, arranging his book so every chapter is filled with exercises, case studies and an innovative use of “Quick Tips” that offer the reader a fast way to integrate the tools in the book. he is also a gifted storyteller…

Practical and step-by-step, the book’s thirteen chapters offer grassroots organixers and leaders thinking about starting a group (or groups in need of renewal) a workbook and spirit guide….

Not just for beginners, he offers seasoned organizers refreshing wake-up calls throughout the book…a useful and personal guide.”

-James Mumm, Executive Director of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition.

Attn: Gov. Palin: Community Organizers Have "Actual Responsibilities"

BPCO — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:04:31 -0400

I was only 27 years old (in my wayward youth) when I was elected to public office. Now, as a community organizer for over thirty years, I have some perspective on the relative “actual responsibilities” of community organizers and elected officials.

From 1975 to 1979, I was an elected Assistant Judge and County Administrator of Rutland County, Vermont. I managed the County property and budget and served on a 3 judge panel on civil and criminal cases. Although hardly a major office, I gained perspective on the responsibilities of elected officials. Since I left public office I have worked as professional community organizer.

When I hear VP candidate Palin and others disparage Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer, I realize how narrow is their understanding is of public life. Community organizers develop grass roots leaders and build organizations – often in under-represented, low-income communities. They bring people together to solve community problems by getting the real experts– those closest and most affected by those problems -- involved in creating solutions to their problems.

This is as American as the PTA and the Girl Scouts.. We have long solved problems by building community organizations. We don’t rely on government to solve all our problems — because it can’t. Government is too distant and the problems are too complex.

Community organizers cover the political spectrum. Civil rights workers were community organizers. So are ...

Tying Emotions to Issues

BPCO — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:54:19 -0400

I was in Sebastopol recently, as the guest of a local community activist and organizer. A woman who had organized the protection of the California coast was there. The movement arose when someone bought 13 miles of coast and wanted to develop it.

She said that her organization, after winning a state-wide referendum to establish a Coastal commission, organizes 12 coastal walks every summer. She herself had walked, over several years, from Oregon to Mexico along the coast.

Someone else in the room said she had learned it was important to connect “emotions to issues.” This seems to be what the organizers of the coastal walks know and are doing. It is one thing to want to preserve the coast of California as an ideal. It is quite another to walk on the rocks and the sand, to smell the ocean, to see the surf breaking, to feel the sun and the sand in your toes. I think this might have been what she meant by connecting the emotions to the issue.

I, myself, remembered over 35 years ago, how I had gathered a bucket of mussels near Stinson Beach, brought them home, boiled them in white wine and tasted how good they were. The memories of taste and small last longer than thought.

So how do we connect emotions to issues?