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Organizers Burden

Bangkok The Organizers’ Forum delegation had two great meetings with organizers and the job before them was stunning and prodigious.  We had the opportunity to meet for several hours with five union organizers working to organize industrial plants along the eastern shore of Thailand.  We also got lucky and our trip coincided with a training [...]

A Fish in the Sea of People

Washington Pulling last minute pieces together as the Organizers’ Forum delegation moves from their homes and offices in the United States and Canada towards airports heading for Bangkok, the site of this year’s international dialogue with labor and community organizations in Thailand and along the Burmese border, I find myself bouncing back and forth with [...]

Health Care Fire Storm

Niagara Falls Waking up after a long and productive training dialogue with Judy Duncan, ACORN Canada’s head organizer, for their talented lead organizers, I was reading The Globe and Mail. The comment page included a column by David Shribman, the executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette trying to explain the messy health care fireworks [...]

Learning the Suburbs

Silver Springs An interesting byproduct of providing some support on capacity building to organizations in the DC/Baltimore areas has involved my being sent to re-education camp to learn more about the vast, sprawling suburbs that dominate this area of the country.  For the life of me I have to learn how to distinguish one row [...]

Leader Thinking

Chicago    The board of the Organizers’ Forum set aside an entire day for what turned out to be a fascinating dialogue on leadership development and training for community and labor organizations.  There were a host of challenges, but in sharing the practices of various networks including DART, WORC, PICO, ACORN Canada, Acorn International, SEIU, and [...]

City Works Less

Lincoln Park

Chicago I have become fascinated – maybe obsessed – by mentally measuring the changes, small and perhaps significant, that are being imprinted by the current depression.  Being in an area in Chicago I have often and regularly visited near Fullerton and Clark near Lincoln Park let me note some shifts.  Chicago is still [...]

May Day Flu

New Orleans In recent weeks organizers and advocates have been calling for a mass showing of support for immigration reform in cities around the country by hitting the streets for solidarity on May Day. The hope was to put some wind in the sails of immigration reform [...]

Life is Not a Beach

Puerto Playa        After more goodbyes and last minute meetings about plans and problems, we were off in a van offered by the general secretary of an island-wide, 50,000 member transport workers union that we were fortunate to meet our last night in Santiago thanks to one of the organizer’s ingenuity (props to Steffan Lajoie!).  [...]

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