Keeping our Communities Organized Institute: Building Power, Policy and Healthy Lifestyles for Transformative Change
Keeping our Communities Organized is an institute that works to build the infrastructure for sustainable black, brown, indigenous, and working-class communities. The institute will focus on three pillars that are needed to create strong, vibrant communities.
They are:
Understand, analyze, and develop policy that supports the development of black, brown, and working-class communities,
Provide program development and community organizing training and support while also helping groups build the infrastructure to sustain this work and
Provide management through best practices, cohort development and professional counseling for change makers that support successful navigation of the work and daily life of community organizers.
Keeping our Communities Organized is a resource for grassroots leaders who travel to Chicago, one of America’s most politically contentious cities to receive training, engage in policy debate and collaboration and learn how to maintain a healthy lifestyle in the stressful work of advocating for social change. The institute will provide a space for the historical, social, and political analysis required for a new generation of leaders to more fully understand the historical context, the skills and principles needed to effectively organize in our communities and the emotional and mental support needed to sustain the work for the long haul.
This uniquely important space will enable these leaders to reflect, analyze and conduct research, examine and debate ideas, movements, organizing models and other practices, which serve as the basis for collective action on broader issues that impact black, brown, indigenous and working-class communities nationwide.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
For black, brown, indigenous, and working-class communities there are entrenched systems that are fueled by our oppression, highly structured and resourced. Tragically, the impacted communities have little to no organizational structure, relationships, resources, or systems of education to transform our daily conditions.
Leadership Development and Community Organizing
For oppressed communities, efforts to organize have often been met with a violent response by systems across the globe, which has severely crippled the infrastructure for power building in impacted communities. As a result, today most of our communities have organizations that offer social services but do not organize to hold systems, power brokers, and elected officials accountable to ensure just policies and equitable resources. We recognize the importance of effective program delivery in our communities in order to meet basic needs, build leadership, relationships and remove obstacles for movement participation.
Policy Analysis and Development
Black, brown, indigenous and working class grassroots leaders and organizations lack a space dedicated to policy debate and development that is informed by the lived experience of oppressed communities. As a result of the disconnect that exists between traditional civil rights organizations and leaders within grassroots organizations, young leaders often lack access to historical knowledge of critical movements and legislative accomplishments achieved by their forerunners. In addition, the advocacy of traditional civil rights organizations is too often devoid of the wisdom of the lived experiences of oppressed communities. There is a rich, complex and profound history of organizing work that led to significant changes in civil and human rights legislation and public policy achieved primarily through the efforts of leaders of color. There is an immense need for the collection, review and at times interrogation of these legislative accomplishments that are readily accessible to grassroots leaders.
Life Management
As leaders embrace the responsibility of working for racial justice and meaningful change, the intense stress of this work; navigating processes and problems for members, long hours, stress of organizing campaigns, confronting power, pressure from entrenched corporate interests, managing bills and sustaining relationships can be overwhelming. Community organizers have a short “shelf life” because there is a lack of support and space for effective navigation of the challenges, tools to manage the stress of the work and counseling to help leaders work through inevitable issues they encounter in the work.
Current Models
There are currently facilities like Keeping our Communities Organized near the nation’s capital that offer seminar space and leadership development trainings for emerging leaders from various faith and organizing backgrounds. An example of such a facility is the William Penn House, a Quaker seminar and hospitality center located near Capitol Hill. The William Penn House provides leadership development trainings and a space “where congressional staff members and citizen action leaders meet for informal luncheon discussions with Quakers and persons known to Quakers who could supply first-hand information on policy issues.” In addition to providing seminar space, the William Penn House also provides lodging space for emerging leaders.
Impact
Leadership Development and Community Organizing
Program development is a bridge to the artistic science of community organizing, which we define as working with the people directly impacted by a condition, building strategy and power to move policy and/or resources to improve lived conditions. We seek to utilize the collective experience and skill of our organizers to provide these supports to leaders who seek to make meaningful change in our communities.
Policy Analysis and Development
The Institute will serve as an essential bridge in understanding the relationship between local and national policy change. The Institute will also serve as the repository of this noteworthy body of work, a space for research and political debate across a myriad of quality of life issues, and provide affordable retreat lodging for new and emerging movement leaders.
Life Management
We will provide that support from veteran organizers, healers, mentors, coaches, counselors and other health care professionals who are currently in our network.
