Community Organizing

Yesterday, as a sort of social experiment, I posed the question “When you see the term Community Organizing/Organizer, what do you think?” and got responses from the fairly predictable hippy/communist/doesn’t like to shower to references to Obama to really great descriptions like “walking the talk” “people from all community sectors working together for a common vision/mission” and “a good way to stay young”. I had only asked out of idle curiosity, but the answers I got definitely got me thinking. Community Organizing has as many definitions as there are organizers. What works with one city or block or group will not work with another. I am definitely starting to learn that here at Crossroads Urban Center. There are different tactics to working with the Coalition of Religious Communities than there are with the Homeless Opportunities and Rights Network or the Anti-Hunger Action Committee. All of the groups work for social justice and work out of the same building, but where CORC organizes religious groups to lobby their legislators all over the state on economic justice issues like regulating the payday lending and recruits mostly from churches or involvement fairs, AHAC and HORN work more with the food pantry clients and the homeless population in Salt Lake City on justice issues such as camping ordinances or food stamp accessibility on a more local level.

But when I was reading a book on community organizing the other week and talking to my friend who works at a church and was recruiting volunteers to teach Sunday School, it occurred to me that working at a church and being a community organizer have a lot in common: both have to constantly recruit new members and then cultivate those members into more active volunteers, both generally have to provide cookies and coffee at any events they host, both have members who will be rather cantankerous if said meetings run over time and can do things like install a clock within eyesight of the pulpit (I actually heard of this happening at a church. Ha!) and have to work toward making their community better, whether by promoting Jesus, justice, or both!

More general updates, I am making more friends here and even had some over for chicken tortilla soup the other day, I found out my dog that we’ve had since I was in elementary school got put to sleep, which made for a rough weekend, I went to a concert by the very cool Emma’s Revolution, I found out the grant my coworker and I worked on went through and we will get financial contributions toward our efforts to raise compassion for undocumented workers in Utah, and the holiday season is looming ever closer and, while stressful, will be positively delightful without finals! Currently, I am waiting on tenterhooks to read the final installment in the Inheritance Cycle, what addictive books!