On-line Organizing Class in Full Swing

Posted on March 19, 2013 by JOIN for Justice

Community organizing is a discipline that has always been rooted in the power of relationships. Now, thanks to the internet, that power of relationships and networks has the potential to go global and JOIN is finding a way to harness that potential. This winter, JOIN for Justice entered into a new partnership with Marshall Ganz and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to offer an on-line class to organizers in the Jewish community. This partnership represents an experiment with an innovative way of delivering training and support to Jewish organizers around the country. When asked about some of the challenges and opportunities that come with this format, Amanda Silver, who coordinates this new program for JOIN said, “It’s very exciting to wrestle with the question of how to build the core aspects of organizing into an on-line learning experience. How do you build in face to face interaction and do it well, despite the distances? That’s what we are learning.”

The class, which kicked off earlier this month and includes weekly web-based lectures and discussion sections, has over 100 students around the globe, fourteen of which are Jewish leaders who registered for the class through JOIN for Justice. While the class has just started, the possibilities that this pilot represents are already becoming apparent. In addition to taking Marshall Ganz’s class, JOIN’s fourteen students  participate in extra sessions led by JOIN staff.  Less experienced organizers learn diverse strategies for actions to affecting change. Organizers with multiple years of experience learn skills for coaching new organizers. Both groups hone skills for campaign planning, develop their personal organizing narrative, and root their work in real world on-going organizing projects. Both groups also do all of this while also thinking about what it means to be a Jewish organizer organizing Jewish communities, and to be part of a network of others doing the same.

To understand what the on-line class represents for the Jewish organizing community, we turn again to Amanda Silver.

“Being an organizer in the Jewish community can be very isolating. If you’re not living and working in a hub like Boston, it’s hard to get support and training, or even to find others who are doing work like yours. Thinking about taking this kind of training to scale allows us to experiment with new ways to support organizers working in diverse locations. Just the other day in fact I was talking to a class participant from Rochester, who said if it weren’t for this class she wouldn’t know where to go to develop her organizing skills. It’s also been an excellent opportunity for me and for JOIN to better understand the opportunities and challenges that are unique to organizing in Jewish communities, and to leverage that understanding to better support and equip Jewish organizers.”

This on-line class raises a number of good questions and may serve as a model for reaching new populations of organizers.  It also encourages cooperation and the exchange of ideas across not only borders but whole continents. The content of the JOIN facilitated sessions is still emerging according to the needs of the participants and the capacity of its instructors, but by the end of this June it’s safe to say JOIN will have learned valuable lessons about what a truly national and even global network of Jewish organizers can look like and how capacity building in the Jewish Community can be taken to scale.

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JOIN for Justice Supporting Historic National Campaign

Posted on March 14, 2013 by JOIN for Justice

This winter, JOIN for Justice has embarked upon an undertaking that has major significance for our organization, the Jewish community, and potentially the United States as a whole. One of the issues shaping the beginning of the second Obama administration and the current Congress is immigration reform. Recent moves by prominent Republicans to reach out to Latino voters in the wake of last November’s elections have presented an opportunity for a consensus around comprehensive immigration reform that has not existed for decades. A number of  Jewish Social Justice leaders came to realize, through conversations with one another this past fall, that this potentially historic moment has presented an opportunity to the Jewish Social Justice Movement and the Jewish Community as a whole to have a major impact on the lives of millions of aspiring Americans. From these conversations, has been born a coordinated Jewish campaign for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.

This year, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, and other Jewish organizations will be working with PICO National Network and United We Dream to mobilize Jewish voters in key congressional districts in Illinois, California, Arizona, Florida, and Colorado to push for reform. JOIN for Justice has been engaged by the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable to play a key role in this campaign, providing strategy consultation, training, and coaching to 10 Jewish organizations in vital locations across the country.   Six of our leaders – including alumni of the Jewish Organizing Fellowship and Seminary Leadership Project – will serve as coaches in this campaign.  By this summer JOIN will have impacted the development of hundreds of lay and professional leaders who in turn will mobilize thousands of people to stand up for change. We are preparing leaders around the country to engage their Jewish constituents in story-telling and legislative actions aimed at encouraging the construction of a new communal narrative about the Jewish Immigrant experience in this country that binds our history to that of today’s immigrants.

Meir Lakein, JOIN’s Director of Organizing, is directing JOIN’s contributions to this momentous effort. He had this to say about what this campaign means to him and to JOIN for Justice.

 “We get to do what we do best, which is to develop leaders, and do it at a historical moment. This is really the first time that we as an organization have a chance to be part of directly having a systemic impact at the national level. I’m personally very excited about enabling Jewish institutions to work in partnership with communities outside our own rather than in service to them. It’s a really historic chance to change the way that we as Jews relate to the rest of the world. Also, this is really big. Life can be different for 11 million people in the United States. To change that many people’s lives. That’s big.”

The outcome of this campaign is hardly assured, but the opportunity for change is real and JOIN’s staff is proud to be taking part in a moment that may well prove to be tipping point in American history.

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Greetings from JOIN’s New Interim Fellowship Director

Posted on March 14, 2013 by JOIN for Justice

 

I moved to Boston in 2009 from Milwaukee, WI in search of deeper Jewish community committed to liberation and celebrating Shabbat at the same time.  I was searching for a place to be a bigger, fuller version of myself.  I found JOIN.  Through my placement at the Jewish Community Relations Council, my phenomenal cohort, and support from JOIN, I developed a stronger confidence in being an organizer and in being myself.

Now, I am thrilled to be the next interim Fellowship Director and feel lucky be a part of this current cohort’s journey. I have benefited immensely from the JOIN alumni network. For the last four years, I have been surrounded by brilliant minds and serious organizers responsible for movement building and making concrete changes in peoples’ lives. I have worked on several campaigns with JOIN alumni, helped found a youth coalition with JOIN alumni, and have been supported through hard times by JOIN alumni. I am grateful for this community and for this current opportunity to help shape it.  I hope to support and push the current fellows to develop their powerful organizing tools, their understanding of how power works in the world, and their powerful selves.

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Greetings from JOIN’s New Development Manager

Posted on March 12, 2013 by JOIN for Justice

JOIN recently hired it’s first full-time development professional. When asked if she’d like to offer a few words of greeting to the JOIN community, our new Development Manager, Ilene Weismehl, had this to say.

“I have worked in the non-profit world for most of my career and have been privileged to raise funds for a variety of compelling and inspiring causes. Two of my favorite jobs over the years have been Brown RISD Hillel and Greater Boston Legal Services. I see both of these experiences as the perfect stepping stones to my work at JOIN for Justice. At JOIN I am delighted to help raise funds on behalf of inspiring young people who are working towards systemic change in the in Jewish and non-Jewish communities and who are exploring their Jewish identity in the context of organizing.”

If you’d like to learn more about Ilene, check out her staff profile.

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SLP Alumnus Hard at Work in New Jersey Shul

Posted on March 12, 2013 by JOIN for Justice

Rabbi Greg Litcofsky, alumnus of JOIN’s Seminary Leadership Project (where rabbinical and cantorial students learn organizing skills through classes, workshops and internships) and current JOIN for Justice board member, recently left Massachusetts to take up a new role at a new congregation in northern New Jersey. It’s been less than a year but Rabbi Litcofsky is already hard at work building a stronger community at Temple Emanu-El of West Essex, conducting the congregation’s first listening campaign. The New Jersey Jewish News dropped by to see how things were going and recently had this to say.

The new rabbi at Temple Emanu-El of West Essex in Livingston is not in a hurry to put his stamp on the congregation. Rabbi Greg Litcofsky will lead them where they want to go, but he won’t set the vision. Instead, he’d like the congregation to take its cues from, well, the congregation.

That’s why he’s initiating a series of conversations designed to build community and uncover the shared vision and goals of the congregants. The “listening campaign” was launched in January. 

“It’s like building a Mishkan,” said Litcofsky, referring to the biblical tabernacle built with offerings from all the Israelite tribes.

“People have to bring gifts of the heart to build it. Here the gifts are the stories — stories of how to build a sacred space, stories of hopes, dreams, visions. What made the Mishkan valuable is that it belonged to the people,” he said in a meeting in his office in January that included several of the congregation’s lay leaders.

For the full story, originally posted March 6th, check out www.njjewishnews.com.

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