Community Organizing

Halle Parker 11-30-2023
Four photos in a grid, one is the exterior of a church, two feature people worshipping inside different churches, and one shows a barge on a river.

Photo by Halle Parker 

MANY CONSIDER LOUISIANA ground zero for the country’s most pressing environmental problems. The risks of living in a state long nicknamed “Sportsman’s Paradise” continue to mount as worsening, climate change-fueled hurricanes threaten its degrading coastlines, which slip away with rising tides. Meanwhile, an ongoing industrial boom endangers the health of residents living along the fence line of some of the major fossil fuel plants that help drive global warming. But for two quite different church communities — one deep in Louisiana’s countryside and the other in the state’s most populous city — the risks present an opportunity to model what’s needed for a resilient and faithful future.

Tucked in the rural remains of Louisiana’s plantation country, just under 500 people, most of them Black, call the small town of Convent, La., home. The 300-year-old community, situated about 50 miles west of New Orleans on I-10, moves with the bend of the winding Mississippi River, which cuts through the entirety of St. James Parish. Convent serves as the parish seat, and many of the families date back generations, descending from people who were enslaved on sugarcane and indigo plantations.

But people aren’t the only ones who reside there. Some of the wide swaths of land once used for plantations began to be sold to chemical companies in the mid-to-late 1900s. On the eastern end of Convent, a trio of industrial plants neighbor each other, spewing pollution. The coal export facility, fertilizer manufacturer, and chlorine manufacturer each silently release their own toxic mix of hazards into the air — and Convent residents like Rev. Roderick Williams breathe that air every day.

Williams believes his neighbors have suffered as a result, as cancer has spread throughout his community and others in St. James while chemical plants proliferated. It’s challenging to attribute a single cancer case to environmental pollution, but Louisiana Tumor Registry data shows that at least one census tract in St. James has a significantly higher rate of cancer than much of the state.

Williams’ hometown of Convent and the rest of St. James Parish sit in the heart of Louisiana’s chemical corridor, an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River running from Baton Rouge through New Orleans. The heavily industrialized swath — forged through the most generous property tax exemption program in the nation — has garnered the infamous nickname of “Cancer Alley” due to concerns about the health impact of the more than 200 industrial plants scattered there. A 2021 ProPublica report found that “Cancer Alley” was one of the country’s largest hotspots for toxic air.

Michael Woolf 8-31-2023

Cover cartoon by Art Young for the “Special Christmas Number” of The Masses, 1913. Via Wikimedia.

According to a recent Gallup poll, labor unions are enjoying their highest levels of national national support since 1965. One major reason for renewed labor organizing is the COVID-19 pandemic, as workers started to ask whether a new future for work was possible in the midst of the pandemic. Some of the demands that laborers were making then are still being made now: increased pay, safer working conditions, and flexible schedules. In the U.S., the federal minimum wage is still a paltry $7.25 per hour. Federal minimum wage has not increased since July 2009 but if it had been keeping up with inflation, it would be over $21 an hour today.

What would Jesus have to say about America’s hot labor summer specifically, and the renewed organized labor movement more generally speaking?

Maria J. Stephan 4-25-2018

AUTHORITARIANISM is on the march. The rise of right-wing populism in Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, and now the United States highlights the fragility of democracy. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has propagated anti-immigrant sentiment while cracking down on independent media. Poland’s nationalist party has challenged judicial independence while asserting state control over media. Philippine’s President Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to strip civil liberties and employ violent vigilantism to address drug problems. In the U.S., Donald Trump mobilized a largely white base while railing against societal groups, including Muslims and immigrants, to win the election.

Authoritarian figures elected in democratic contexts often ignore constitutions, gut institutions, consolidate power, and snuff out domestic dissent. Dictators are often vindictive; they put themselves above the law and thrive on fear and popular apathy. Their toolkit includes ridiculing and delegitimizing protesters, pitting societal groups against each other, and coopting potential challengers.

But authoritarian figures have an Achilles’ heel. To stay in power, they depend on the obedience and cooperation of ordinary people. If and when large numbers of people from key sectors of society (workers, bureaucrats, students, business leaders, police) stop giving their skills and resources to the ruler, he or she can no longer rule.

Historically, the most powerful antidote to authoritarian figures has been strategic organizing and collective action. That includes civil resistance, employing tactics such as marches, consumer boycotts, labor strikes, go-slow tactics, and demonstrations. In democracies, civil resistance has often been used alongside institutional approaches (elections, legislation, court cases) to defend and advance political and economic rights.

Franklin Golden / RNS

Children sing at the community-organizing camp in Durham, N.C. Photo via Franklin Golden / RNS

Instead of the traditional vacation Bible school, this downtown church partnered with seven other congregations — black, white, Baptist, Jewish, Episcopal, Pentecostal, and nondenominational — to put on a community-organizing camp for kids aged 4 to 12.

Catherine Cuellar 9-23-2015
courtesy of ARSE and LUPE

courtesy of ARSE and LUPE

SIRI CANNOT TAKE you to the South Tower Estates in the southernmost Texas border community of Little Mexico. Among the more than 1,200 recognized colonias in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, South Tower is one of the more established: Streets are paved and lots have curbs, if not sidewalks—amenities that were required for colonias only after the adoption of model subdivision rules in 1989. A few solar-powered light fixtures even dot the streets at night.

But the neighborhood still is without city council representation. All residents are connected to the main thoroughfare between their homes and jobs by a single intersection. A dead dog in the middle of the road bakes in the hot summer sun.

Colonias began around the 1950s as semi-permanent camps in southwestern border states—Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California—developed by private landowners to house the farm workers they employed. Once the land was paid off, an owner was relieved of any responsibility to further maintain, much less improve, their property; many landowners didn’t fix or change a thing for decades. Today, amenities in colonias vary dramatically from one to the next, and many lack wastewater management, trash collection, and street lights.

Eva Carranza lives in South Tower Estates with her 15-year-old daughter. Like many families in their neighborhood, they have mixed documentation status. Eva’s daughter is starting to think about college, but it’s tough to get information about different schools’ standardized test and GPA requirements, applications and deadlines, or available scholarships and loans. Though some families in their neighborhood have cell phone and internet access, few have a computer. Libraries offer web access—but there aren’t any libraries in the colonias.

So Carranza turned to ARISE (“A Resource in Serving Equality”), a grassroots organization that helps youth and women who live in colonias through leadership development and education programs. Inspired by Luke 4:18—“God has chosen me to bring good news to the poor”—Catholic Sister of Mercy Gerrie Naughton founded ARISE in 1987. Since then, ARISE, which is co-sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy, the Daughters of Charity, and the Sisters of the Incarnate Word, has supported preschool education and summer reading programs for children in colonias. ARISE has also organized parent-teacher associations that give parents confidence to engage with their children’s teachers and help area students matriculate and graduate.

7-21-2014
I think we all know that the issues we’re facing cannot be solved by Gamaliel alone. They cannot be solved by Catholic Charities alone. If they could have been solved by one institution—Sojourners, the National Council of La Raza, the NAACP—they would’ve been solved.
Julianne Couch 6-03-2014

RURAL COMMUNITIES in the U.S. wrestle with many of the same problems facing the rest of the country—persistent unemployment, access to quality health care, air and water degradation, a broken immigration policy. Other issues—such as supporting sustainable farming practices and drawing young people into agriculture, lack of broadband access, and the challenges of small-town economic development—are more unique to rural life.

Even though the 46.2 million people living in rural U.S. counties constitute only 15 percent of the country’s total population (spread across 72 percent of the nation’s land area), we are all connected—urban, suburban, and rural—by foodways, waterways, wilderness areas, and our national politics. As one Midwest-based organizer put it, “many progressives fundamentally don’t understand rural America—they don’t even know why they should care about it. You can’t understand the power of the tea party without understanding rural America. It is the key to the House of Representatives, and progressives will be hamstrung until they can make inroads in a few key congressional districts.”

But that organizer and others also draw power and hope from the deep history of populism in the rural Midwest and parts of the South, and the endurance of community-oriented values that aren’t just “heartland” clichés.

While many young people are itching to leave rural areas and small towns—anxious to find better jobs, educational opportunities, or city culture—others have always stayed put or returned after time away. And some “city cousins” move to rural America, enjoying the opportunity to work on issues they care about (with the bonus of a brilliant night sky). Here are four stories of young people investing in rural communities in the Midwest.  —The Editors

“It makes a difference in the lives of people.”

Rae O’Leary, 29, is a respiratory therapist and nurse on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in north-central South Dakota. The reservation straddles two counties, the fourth- and 11th-poorest in the nation. O’Leary works for Missouri Breaks Industries Research Inc. in Eagle Butte, the reservation’s hub with a population of about 1,300. She lives 20 miles out, on a ranch with her husband and two young children. O’Leary is a member of the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa; her husband is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and their children are enrolled in that tribe.

“When I define how rural we are, I tell people our nearest Wal-Mart is two hours away. That’s my point of reference for city folk.

Eboo Patel 1-07-2013

(marekuliasz / Shutterstock)

PERHAPS NO FRAMEWORK has impacted my organization, Interfaith Youth Core, more than Marshall Ganz’s approach to public narrative (“leadership storytelling”), best articulated in his March 2009 Sojourners article “Why Stories Matter.” We use it in our trainings with college student interfaith leaders and recommend it in the workshops we do with university faculty. Most famously, it was employed by the 2008 Obama campaign.

Like all effective frameworks, there is both a visceral and a heady quality to what Ganz teaches. Stories are the way human beings understand and communicate our deepest values, Ganz says, and there are three major stories that leaders must tell. The first is the story of self. This is not a selfish activity, or even one just about self-understanding (although that is certainly a piece of it). It’s about interpreting to others your reasons for being engaged in a struggle. This helps them understand your involvement and, more important, gives them inspiration and language to get active themselves.

The second type of story is the story of us. Religions, races, ethnicities, and nations tell such stories brilliantly but often do it in a way that excludes—and makes enemies of—those outside the magic circle. The challenge for the 21st century leader is to tell a story of us that includes people of all backgrounds who are fighting for the same cause. Stories of us build community out of people who would otherwise be strangers.

Kendall Clark Baker 11-27-2012

In any genuine community ... self-interest and public interest are not at odds, but are two names for the same thing. —Andrew Delbanco

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING has been around for a long time—certainly long before 2008, when it became a household word during Barack Obama's rise to the presidency. Not that it is understood nowadays any more than before.

I thought I knew what community organizing was when I served as the pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ and was introduced to a newly formed faith-based organizing project called Inland Congregations United for Change (ICUC) in San Bernardino, California. But I soon learned that community organizing had a different starting point, as well as a different methodology, than I thought.

As a pastor, I had always been concerned about challenging injustice. However, I came to understand that community organizing is less about taking on yet another good cause and more about the important work of building human community.

As such, community organizing is a perfect fit for religious congregations and clergy. It addresses social justice concerns in the larger community, putting democracy to work by giving voice to ordinary families. But more important, community organizing can strengthen the life of the congregation. And it can bring power to the vocation of the religious leader.

Beth Newberry 11-27-2012

"WE DON'T WORK toward justice; we bring about justice through systemic change," says Rev. Cindy Weber, with a fierce and loving smile, when asked how her congregation, Jeff Street Baptist Community at Liberty, seeks justice through reaching out to the community. There is no pride or bravado in her statement, but a firmness that comes from more than 20 years of pastoring a small, community church that actively helps bring about God's peace on earth.

Jeff Street, located in Louisville, Ky., has an active membership of approximately 100 people—a David-sized congregation compared to many mainline or mega-churches. However, the creativity, dedication, and passion of the church's members, manifested in hospitality programs for and with the homeless, have made a giant-sized impact on local economic justice issues. And the congregation didn't stop there; as part of a coalition of area churches, Citizens of Louisville Organized and United Together (CLOUT), the church has made an impression with policy work and community organizing on the state level as well. Jeff Street's commitment to empower poor people has even reached internationally: Members have invested in Oikocredit micro-lending programs to the tune of $180,000.

"We are a church that knows the difference between justice and charity, and also between charity and hospitality," says Weber.

Jeff Street, as members call it, started as the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel, a worship community that had been meeting for decades at Louisville's Jefferson Street Baptist Center, an outreach to homeless people that is a mission of the Southern Baptist-affiliated Long Run Baptist Association. But when the congregation's head pastor left in 1987 and it promoted Rev. Weber from associate to interim pastor, the move touched off a four-year struggle with the Center's parent organization. The Long Run Baptist Association refused to recognize Weber's leadership because she is a woman—even though, at the time, she was also serving as director of the center. In 1991, the year the congregation installed Weber as permanent pastor, it was told to leave the center. The church kept the name "Jeff Street"—the shortened moniker by which Jefferson Street Baptist Center was known in the nearby Clarksdale housing project and environs—and moved a couple blocks south, into a rehabbed former machine shop on Liberty Street.

Betsy Shirley 5-01-2012

“Question people who have authority, because they tend not to use it well unless you stay on top of them.”

That’s what Ana Garcia-Ashley learned from her grandmother, a seamstress and a teacher in the campo of the Dominican Republic. She was a woman who taught by example, challenging anybody in her small village who misused power. “She would not tolerate anything,” remembers Ana. “She took on whomever—even priests.”

And you can say the same about Ana.

Throughout more than 30 years of community organizing, Ana has put her Catholic faith into action by holding people in power accountable: standing in protest at state capitols, stopping predatory lenders, and blocking deportation trucks by laying her body in the road. “To me there is only one way to be a Catholic,” she says, “and that is out in the public arena, doing something.”

In 2011, Ana became the executive director of Gamaliel, a national network for faith-based community organizing. As “congregational” or faith-based organizers, Gamaliel emphasizes systemic change: engaging congregations in the work of feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and sheltering the homeless, but also in the work of transforming the oppressive systems that leave so many people without food, health insurance, or homes in the first place.

Ana also is the first woman of color to lead a national community organizing network, faith-based or otherwise.

“I am emboldened and encouraged that leadership in the field has become more representative of our grassroots leaders and organizers,” wrote Ana during her first year as executive director.

In an attempt to discredit the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a young conservative activist created a fake Facebook page and website for a non-existent environmental group. Then, posing as someone interested in organizing a union, tried to get a local organizer to give him tips on shaking down politicians. The New York Times reports:

At this point, Rhea Byer-Ettinger, an organizer for Manhattan Together, felt her internal baloney detector go on red alert. “Beep, beep, beep,” she said. “I said to him: ‘Well, that’s not how we work. Tell me, why are you asking me about that?’ ”  

As a former employee of an IAF affiliate in Chicago, I’m really not sure what this young guy was hoping to find. I’m sure in any large organization you could find someone to secretly record who might say something that could sound unflattering. But, was he really expecting a nationwide crime syndicate that uses collective bargaining as a tool to extort money or favors from politicians?

Passionate and sincere disagreement about politics is a good and healthy thing but tactics of this young activist and others like James O’Keefe show something dangerous. It’s the assumption that those who disagree with you politically aren’t just wrong, but evil.

On the other end, this means progressive activists should ask themselves if folks like the Koch brothers are “evil” or just some really rich dudes with politics they don’t like. 

Denali DeGraf 1-01-2012

Indigenous communities -- and local church leaders -- stand against open-pit mining that threatens to despoil Patagonia.

Patty Whitney 4-18-2011
For three months last year the Gulf Coast oil spill was the major topic of news reports all over the world. From the explosion on April 20, 2010, until the capping of the gushing well on July 15, 2010, the headlines were consumed with images and dialogue about the tragedy unfolding before our very eyes. Shortly after the news of the capping, the government reported that “most” of the oil was gone, and that things were getting back to normal. The camera crews packed up. The reporters turned in their hotel room keys and gathered their deductible tax receipts. And they all left. Kumbaya, the oil was gone, and the world was normal again. The world could move on to other, more pressing interests. That is … the rest of the world could move on to other, more pressing interests.
Jeannie Choi 4-06-2011

It was announced today that Glenn Beck will end his program on the Fox News Channel later this year in order to create a "variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channe

It is time for those of us who have been advocating for comprehensive immigration reform to rethink our strategies.
Allen Johnson 1-05-2011

This past Monday, January 3, anti-mountaintop removal activist Judy Bonds exhaled her last breath from the homeland she loved.

The Main Reason: They upend the power structure to give people at the bottom a better chance.