An Organizing Oppurtunity

Changing How We Talk About the Economy

Last year’s temporarily expanded child tax credit, as well as a growing number of guaranteed income pilot programs, have shifted the way the public and policymakers talk about money, the economy, and who “deserves” to thrive in the United States. Community Change and our grassroots partners are exploring narrative change and the language we use to talk about the economy, with the help of Liberation in a Generation. Through a series of trainings this spring, we are working together to describe the equitable society we want to see, frame and test messages about economic security in our communities, understand the history of the dominant racist and sexist narrative about welfare, and find ways to reframe the conversation.

Investing in Organizing

To win power and a progressive governing agenda, we must organize more people in more places, with better tools and tactics. Power in Places is a peer-learning cohort of grassroots partners convened by Community Change that focuses on supporting and surfacing successful approaches to building grassroots power, base-building, and innovative organizing practices and models, especially in Black, Brown, and immigrant communities. In collaboration with our partners, we seek to demonstrate what practices and conditions it takes to effectively grow our movement, through base-building and leadership development, at scale with soul. This cohort has grown to 28 powerful, grassroots organizations that are diverse in their geographies, base-building methodologies, and issues, and are deeply committed to innovations in organizing directly impacted people at a scale necessary to build and wield power at the state and local level. The organizations in this cohort are 81% BIPOC-led, 85% women-led, and 63% women of color-led.   

At our core, we are organizers engaging other organizers to learn from each other and strengthen our collective community organizing practice. Together, we seek to build a new knowledge, informed by emergent ideas in our field, that challenges conventional wisdom, disrupts the status quo, and changes people’s minds: learning and building power from the ground up. To this end, our work in 2022 will include:

• Monthly organizer cooperative calls that will provide peer-learning spaces
• Quarterly partner peer-learning calls on themes that include Organizing Talent, Integrating Technology in Organizing, and Building State and Local Governing Power
• Surveys about our partners’ base-building successes, challenges, and goals to inform our ongoing support.

In addition to convening partners in peer-learning spaces, Community Change provides Power in Places partners with flexible, multi-year funding, access to policy and communications support, access to online organizing tools, best practices, and technology, and opportunities to co-create learning and evaluation tools and products to highlight partners’ work.

Housing Justice Event with HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge

The Housing Justice Team and 50+ leaders — folks from California, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, and more who are directly impacted by the lack of safe, affordable housing — held a dynamic meeting this month with HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge and several other HUD officials. Community Change and the leaders we organize secured a commitment to hold this meeting from HUD Chief of Staff Jenn Jones during our Housing Is Essential Town Hall in 2021. After many months of strategic follow-up and leveraging our collective power, it was incredible to witness all women, primarily women of color, lead this bilingual meeting and speak directly to Secretary Fudge, pushing for answers around the need for accountability and change in our four priority areas: race and gender equity in housing, landlord accountability, the decriminalization of people experiencing homelessness, and prioritizing housing for those at the lowest incomes. 

During the meeting, leaders led four breakout groups with HUD officials to dive more deeply into these issue areas. Leaders pressed for greater clarity on what action the administration is taking and advocated for necessary changes, for example, ensuring HUD-subsidized properties are held accountable for providing heating and cooling, and that HUD is held accountable for creating and enforcing consequences for jurisdictions that criminalize homelessness. Our spokespeople powerfully secured a commitment from Secretary Fudge to meet again and gained agreements from the HUD officials present to schedule follow-ups in the coming weeks to delve more deeply into these necessary structural changes to increase housing justice. The work is far from over, but this meeting was a major victory for grassroots base-building, leadership development, and speaking truth to power.