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Live Report!
Leadership Training: Economic Justice and Community Development Workshop for
Urban Ministries Conference
(Chicago, IL - March 10, 2001) This workshop was designed to provide
participants with basics of community organizing. Damon Harrison is a community
organizer in Lynn, MA. He joined Pam Kelley, Director of UUs for Just Economic
Community, in exploring some of the skills needed to develop community-based
leadership and form coalitions that can create change across race and class
lines.
 Harrison
talked about community organizing as generally taking place in three areas:
in the neighborhood, in the community, and in districts (e.g., political districts).
Kelley pointed out that political districts on the state level are represented
by state senators and representatives, and national issues are dealt with
by a state's congressional delegation.
"Once you decide where you want to do your organizing," said Harrison, "you
have to remember that everything comes from the neighborhood. The engagement
has to start there. If you want to do state organizing, if there isn't an
existent network in the neighborhood first, 'forget it.'"
"You have to define the 'plate in which you work,'" said Harrison and Kelley.
The first 'plate,' or category, that organizers need to be aware of, are organizations
which are major funders - in the U.S., these include the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services,
Labor, Justice, and parallel State departments, as well as city taxes, banks,
businesses, non-profit organizations, foundations. All the money which flows
into a community comes from these sources.
There are also gatekeepers (the second 'plate'): people who allow the money
to go out and collect money from funding sources. Educational providers, community
development agencies, child care agencies, mental health agencies, housing
agencies, anti-poverty groups, community action agencies, would fall into
this category. Money flows into these organizations, and they control how
the money gets out.
The third 'plate' consists of neighborhoods…where, said Harrison "the money
is supposed to go." In urban areas, Harrison said, "there are suburbs, and
there are neighborhoods. From there, [the money] is supposed to go to the
residents.
Finally, [the fourth 'plate'] addresses "all the problems that the money
is supposed to fix: illiteracy, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, lack of affordable
housing, etc. All of the programs are in the neighborhoods, they are supposed
to be fixed by the gatekeepers, who get money from the funders."
 This
structure, Harrison and Kelley pointed out, offers one dilemma. The other
is the reality of what is happening when large corporations are making deals
for community work. When a program is instituted in a country, said the workshop
leaders, "the international monetary fund comes in often, and while it appears
to bail out a country, there are enormous prices that have to be paid - money
is devalued, items must be imported, and the structural adjustment plan means
that there is a complete takeover of the government. Land that once was held
in common by indigenous people is shifted to the private sector, depriving
them of access to land. Then gloabal corporations come in and set up factories,
which provide jobs at very low wages, under sweatshop labor conditions. The
factories have moved out of the US and moved overseas, to take advantage of
poor environmental regulation.
"People in poor countries put up with this because military aid is transported,
and people are literally being held down by the military. It behooves us to
study this in detail…take back the idea of globalization as a study action
issue for congregations."
On the local level, the presenters said, organizers need to "know your neighborhood,
know the environment, the plates…know who the funders are, the gatekeepers,
your area. Know your neighbors. Then understand the outside influences, which
impact the funders and the funding sources - the global influences."
Additionally, Kelley and Harrison said, is the need to "identify your allies
and activists. Find out who gives a damn, who is going to stay in the community.
The path is such that organizers, once connected to funding, tend to move
away from the city as a natural path. So part of continuing successful organizing
is the need to identify people who are coming up who can replace people who
will move out of the city."
More information on related topics can be found at the website of UUs for
a Just Economic Community: http://www.uujec.net/
Reported for the web by Deborah Weiner;
formatted for the web by Julie Albanese.
Workshop Background:
Leadership Training in Economic Justice Advocacy and Community Development
Workshop leaders:
Pam Kelley and Damon Harrison
About the Workshop:
Before becoming UUJEC Director, Pam Kelley spent a year developing this organizer's
training project, working with two community organizing groups. This plan of action will
show UUs how to develop a group that will engage suburban UUs in the central city, help
folks from critical neighborhoods for advocacy learn organizing skills, and develop a
funding base. Organizing skills include: door to door community mapping of issues,
interests and activists, community organizing, voter registration and get out the vote,
skills in working with coalitions, the media and fund raising and developing effective
internal working groups across race and class lines. The program has multiple uses for
urban ministries, the most important is to develop well trained community based
leadership.
Workshop leader biographies:
Pam Kelley, Director of Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community, is a
social justice organizer for political change, community base-building and fundraising.
She founded the Organizing Training Project in 1998 and has been Director of UUJEC since
September 1999.
Damon Harrison, Director of Lynn Voter Action in Lynn, MA, grew up in the projects of
Lynn MA, and is a passionate advocate for justice and community-building in that city. He
created Lynn Voter Action as a community based advocacy group that has worked on equality
in education child care, health, jobs and wages, voter registration and clean elections
for five years.
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