In the News
In the News
Gecan: Better Call Saul - US Needs Radicalism, Not Extremism
It may seem strange to argue that the U.S. needs more radicalism, especially in this period of outrageous rhetoric and intense overreaction. But the right kind of radicalism can improve American politics by focusing on fundamental public goods. Leaders should replace showmanship with a radical approach that galvanizes ordinary American citizens.
This concept of political radicalism has a storied history, but the term has faded from the popular lexicon. In 1951 Wall Street Journal editor William H. Grimes described this newspaper’s...
Bishop, Valley Interfaith Celebrate Transformation of Political Culture
In the largest celebration of multiple events, Bishop Daniel E. Flores blessed the opening of a new library in Las Milpas, surrounded by Valley Interfaith leaders, children from Carmen Anaya Elementary School and other community supporters. An assembly chronicled the community-driven effort that went into changing the political culture of South Texas, reflected in the construction of the new library that leaders had fought for and won...
Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk : Replace Despair with Volunteerism in 2018
Look around you. Are you troubled by what you see in the world? Early in the Bible, God was so upset with human conduct so as to flood the earth. Rabbinical commentary suggests it was both shechitut ("corruption") and hamas ("brutal violence") that triggered God's reaction.
Today, upon witnessing violence and brutality, many avert their eyes. For example, there was a recent story with data showing Cleveland as America's fifth most deadly city. Now surely the violence in our neighborhoods merits urgent attention. But when two days later, Cleveland was designated as one of National Geographic's "Best of the World" destinations, many chose instead to whistle a happier tune and wish away our serious problems.
Gecan: Elites Can't Keep Writing Off Americans Who Voted for Trump
After the 2016 election, my view was that the voters had rejected not just Hillary Clinton, but also the modern Democratic Party – a party top-heavy with celebrity candidates and dominated by Wall Streeters, Silicon Valley stars and academic and professional elites.
Now on Tuesday, in Virginia, New Jersey, Washington State and Maine, voters rejected not only Donald Trump, but also the chaotic and unproductive political culture that he embodies and promotes – a culture top-heavy with family members, Wall Streeters, business titans and generals....
TMO Demands, Wins Extension of Harvey Disaster Food Aid
As thousands of Harvey survivors spent hours in line attempting to meet the deadline for emergency food aid, the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (D-SNAP), TMO leaders organized a press conference at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church to demand an extension of the deadline for families.
Said Fr. Simón Bautista, “For two days in a row [my parishioner] got in line at 6 a.m. and by the time she was seen, around 7 p.m., she was told that her last name was not being seen that day. She returned at 3 a.m. to find that 10 to 15 individuals were already in line. These individuals and families have been waiting in the heat, missing work and some still haven’t received the benefits..."
270 GBIO Leaders Learn About Threats Against Muslims in Community
El Paso IAF Puts 'We the People' at the Center of Public Life
Several hundred Border Interfaith and EPISO leaders assembled for an accountability session, one day before early voting began, to challenge candidates for Mayor, City Council and the Board of Trustees for El Paso and Ysleta School Districts around the issues most impacting residents’ daily lives.
Specifically, leaders asked candidates to commit to
800 Metro Vancouver Alliance Leaders Host Accountability Assembly
GCC Fighting to Create a Community Equity Fund
GCC loaded three busloads of leaders and held a 175-person action outside the corporate headquarters of Quicken Loans in Detroit.
Together with ally organization, Detroit Regional Interfaith Voice for Equity (DRIVE), GCC pressed Cleveland Cavaliers owner, Dan Gilbert, to bring fairness to the proposed deal to spend $160 million in public funding to build a new glass atrium on the outside of Quicken Loans Arena, where the Cavs play. GCC is fighting to create a Community Equity Fund to provide a dollar-for-dollar match of all public money in the deal and direct it towards areas of critical importance in Cleveland.
VOICE Trains 100 Muslim Leaders in Northern Virginia
In the last 3 weeks, VOICE trained 325+ leaders including 125 from eight Northern VA mosques and schools. (As of 2017, one-third of the people who attend VOICE member & discerning member institutions are Muslim, 60,000 Muslims.) VOICE leaders took commitments to “twin” with an institution near them that has a community different than them (politically, racially, ethnically, religiously, etc.). VOICE leaders will do listening sessions with their “twinning” partner throughout 2017 to build closer bonds and figure out how we may want to act together locally and at the state level when VA will be one of only two states that will hold a state-wide election.
Together Louisiana Reins In Backdoor Corporate Subsidies
Eight months after their victory in reforming the state Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP), leaders of Together Louisiana noticed that industrial tax exemptions spiked 441% in its last year (2016), with the majority of tax exemptions granted after the reforms passed. They additionally noticed that the Commerce and Industry Board reversed the wording of the measure to undermine the reform that would have limited exemptions to proposals that had secured the approval of the local municipalities sacrificing the revenue.
Unsatisfied with the explanation that the 2016 reforms were not to touch applications already in the works, 100 faith and community leaders of Together Louisiana organized a press conference before the Board of Commerce and Industry’s meeting and then sat in on the meeting itself — demonstrating a rare presence of citizen oversight of a committee that distributed $4.9 billion in tax exemptions last year....
Opponents, Some Supporters, of Q Renovation Plan Pack Meeting
More than 200 people packed Cuyahoga County Council chambers Tuesday on both sides of a proposed plan to spend tax dollars to renovate Quicken Loans Arena...the largest crowd ever to attend a meeting since council formed six years ago, a resolution allowing the county to sell $140 million in bonds to expand and update the arena was introduced....
Members of Greater Cleveland Congregations, a non-partisan coalition which represents 100,000 people across 43 congregations and partner organizations in Cuyahoga County, made up the bulk of the crowd.
Chris Hedges Talks with Michael Gecan About Building Organizations
When asked why he told poor Brooklyn communities in 1980 to raise a quarter of a million dollars without government aid, community organizer Michael Gecan responded, “Because power is organized people and organized money.”
In the latest episode of “On Contact,” the author of “Going Public: An Organizer’s Guide to Citizen Action” went on to tell Chris Hedges that “most activists stress organized people and forget organized money ... we stress both.”
Back of the Yards: Lessons from a Community Organizer, by Mike Gecan
On the Wednesday after November’s presidential election, I found myself in the Back of the Yards area of Chicago’s South Side. I was there to meet with Roman Catholic priest David Kelly. Father Kelly is executive director of Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation, which he runs out of a converted school building on Fifty-first and Elizabeth. He and his team feed the hungry and bring together the perpetrators and victims of gang gun violence in the community.
The Back of the Yards neighborhood—once a sprawling, spewing, foul-smelling collection of stockyards, polluted streams, tenements, and churches—was the original industrial area of the Industrial Areas Foundation, the largest network of community-based organization in the United States, of which I am co-director.
NCG Fights Funding of Adelson-Backed Stadium in Las Vegas
Naming “seven hidden risks” that public funding of a new Adelson-backed Raiders’ stadium would bring to taxpayers, leaders of Nevadans for the Common Good publicly voiced their opposition to the plan with a well-attended press conference.
PCIC Co-Founder Remembered for Confronting Those in Power
The Rev. Paul W. Buckwalter came to Tucson to broaden one church’s community involvement.
In doing so, he changed Tucson....
HuffPost Quotes DAI: Working Together Builds Interfaith Relations
To those concerned about anti-Muslim sentiment in the country, Huffington Post writer Carol Kuruvilla recommends, “Get involved with your local interfaith network.” She cites Dallas Area Interfaith organizer Josephine Lopez-Paul....
Metro IAF Victories Update 2015
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Remembering IAF Director Ed Chambers: Gathering in Chicago in early June, IAF current and former organizers, board members, leaders, and friends held a memorial service for Edward Chambers, long-time director of theIndustrial Areas Foundation (IAF) who died on April 26, 2015. Chambers succeeded IAF’s founder Saul Alinsky as executive director and built the modern IAF. Read Reflections on Chambers’ legacy in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Chronicle on Philanthropy as well by long-time colleague and current IAF Co-Director Mike Gecan.
- Leading on Police Accountability in Cleveland, Baltimore, Bridgeport,Durham;
- Creating Green Jobs for Youth, Returning Citizens, the Hard to Employ in MD and DC;
- Partnering with John Hopkins University to Hire Baltimore Residents After the Riots;
- Battling Wealthy Hedge Fund Owner on Arena Subsidies, Foreclosures & Youth Investment in Milwaukee;
- Advancing Market-driven Gun Violence Reduction Strategy Nationally; Hosting Nation’s First Smart Gun Show in Westchester Co, NY; Published New York Times Op-Ed
- $400 million for affordable housing in Virginia, DC, Maryland, North Carolina;
- Demanding Action by NYC’s Mayor on Public Housing Repairs;
- 1,600 Meet with MA Governor, House Speaker AG, & Boston Mayor ToUnveil New Organizing Agenda;
- 500 in Durham, NC Present New Demands on Housing, Jobs for Youth, & Police Accountability;
- Parent Organizing Yields $4.2 million for After-school in Baltimore & New Vision for schools in New York City and after-school in suburban Maryland.
- Ending mistreatment of autistic and minority children in CT schools & winning public review of health care premium increases in CT.
- A new vision for Chicago and new Work to End Incarceration of Persons with Mental Illness in IL.
Let Refugees Revive American Cities: Admit 250K In This Decade
The White House announcement that the United States should prepare to take in just 10,000 Syrian migrants in the next year is an embarrassingly tepid response to the largest movement of refugees since the end of World War II.
We should do much more — not only increasing the numbers of refugees we accept, but aggressively settling them in American cities, where they can help spark broad economic revivals.
Whether America takes a leadership role or not, conflicts in the Middle East and depressionlike conditions in the Balkans will do what such conditions have always done: trigger the movement of millions of people seeking safety and economic opportunity wherever they can be found.
IAF Co-Director Mike Gecan Addresses "Anxieties of Democracy"
"As an avid reader and admirer of Ira Katznelson’s work, I am both puzzled and disappointed by his essay.
I am puzzled as to why he defines the crisis of democratic decline so narrowly, as a loss of faith in representative institutions and parliamentary governments. He quotes John Locke asserting that “the establishing of the legislative power” is the “first and fundamental positive law” of a good political regime, as well as James Mill, who nearly hyperventilated describing 'the system of representation' as the “grand discovery of modern times.” Really?"
Metro Vancouver Alliance Builds Bridges and Makes Things Happen
The new Metro Vancouver Alliance is devoted to bringing people of different faiths and beliefs together for the sake of the “common good.”
And it recently marked a significant success when Alliance-affiliated churches and synagogues played a role in helping the mostly Filipino staff at Inglewood Care Centre in West Vancouver get through a contentious contract dispute.
'Better Together' Beats Back Separatists in Baton Rouge
Leaders of ‘Better Together’ successfully undermined a suburban incorporation effort (in the St. George area) by convincing voters who had signed onto the original petition to withdraw their signatures.
A small minority of St. George residents needed 17,859 signatures to call a vote for incorporation, an essential first step in separating the suburb
Memorial Service for Ed Chambers Announced
A memorial service for Edward (Ed) Chambers has been scheduled for:
American Jewish University
15600 Mulholland Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90077
The service will be open to IAF organizers and others, and will precede the IAF International meeting scheduled that same day.
Reflections on Chamber's life and legacy below:
Recognizing Ed Chambers by Dick Harmon
Ed Chambers, Leader of Community Organising in the US Inspired Creation of Citizens UK by Neil Jameson
Edward Chambers, Community Organizing’s Unforgiving Hero, New Yorker
Lessons From a Great Community Organizer,Council of Philanthropy
Ed Chambers: Leader of Community Organising in the US Inspired Creation of Citizens UK
Ed Chambers was born in the Midwest of the United States, the son of Thomas and Hazella Chambers, Irish Catholics who had emigrated to America from the west Cork town of Skibbereen, where Chambers was to retire in 2010. Chambers started to train...
Ed Chamber's Memorial
A memorial service for Edward Chambers, successor to Saul Alinsky, was held at St. Gertrude's in Chicago on June 7, 2015. Former Executive Director of the Industrial Areas Foundation was remembered by friends and colleagues as a key figure in the development of worldwide network of grassroots citizens organizations.