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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!).  [...]

An International Organizing Community

Santiago    The leaders met all day from 9 until after 5 and then could be seen continuing the conversations later in the evening.  The vision was gripping.  They were building a cohesive federation in which they saw solidarity between low income and working families and lower income, regular and informal workers joining together not only [...]

Twitter Tutorial

 Santiago    Katia Soriano, Ercilia Sahores and myself jumped out early to drive to Santo Domingo to meet with the Catholic Relief Service to see what it would take to build a partnership.  We got back mid-afternoon to catch up with a “get to know you” session that the leaders had run along with Judy Duncan [...]