In the News

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.

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..."

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

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.

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....

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.”

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.

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....

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.

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.

A memorial service for Edward (Ed) Chambers has been scheduled for:  

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