#relational organizing

[rosielindy]

On a call to action this week I met some wonderful Hoosier women who gave me hope. With renewed energy, I'm more determined than ever to join forces with them and ensure the majority voices are heard in this "Red" state.

One of the participants emphasized "Indiana is a purple state with a turnout problem." The state went Blue for Obama in 2008. We are manifesting an even stronger majority for the midterms in November!

[mountainlamb-blog]

So I just had a meeting with one of our deans about the social justice type curriculum at our medical school and this endless tension between “are we being too political??” “are we not diving deep enough??” 

My answer is “more content! fewer buzzwords!”

I talked about how it’s a lot easier to start a conversation in a diverse group with stories, shared values, concrete discussions, and skill building than yelling “anti-capitalism!”. 

I also said several times throughout the discussion I espouse anti-capitalist/anti-racist/feminist/etc ideologies but even stlil by the end she said “thank you so much for your insight!! and I feel like I’ve just received it from such an unbiased perspective” which is a good sign? bad sign? not sure

[mountainlamb-blog]

I still haven’t decided how anonymous I want to make this tumblr; I’m sorry for being a bit vague.

2.5 years ago, students in the community organizing group I’m part of set out to “help” people experiencing homelessness in our community by putting together a student clinic. Thing is though the first two rules of organizing in our tradition are (1) you never do something for someone which they can do for themselves (2) we’re always seeking power with people rather than power over people. So these students had to actually talk to people experiencing homelessness about what they thought they needed. What they needed was a place to sleep; our city has a lot of free clinics for people experiencing homelessness. What they asked for was for our university to host their tent city.

2 years ago, students and residents of the tent city asked administration if they would host a tent city at our university. 2 years ago, administration said “no”.

Since then, students and tent city residents have worked very hard to engage students, faculty, parents, community members, elected leaders and administration to build power relationally. I got the opportunity to work with a group to hold a public assembly with our state representatives and senator to pressure them to endorse the campaign (they did!)

Yesterday, our administration conceded. Next year, our university will be hosting the tent city.

Cheers to people power!