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Movement Matters has supported the work and development of labor unions throughout our history - through direct contracts to help locals strengthen their internal systems, the development of strategic campaign plans, and anchoring labor-community coalitions. We have watched with enthusiasm as labor has seen a resurgence throughout the US in recent years. We have also worried at the lack of consistent practices in many unions to build deep and robust member-leadership, not only for issues on the shop floor, but to meet the broader political moment. Our long relationship with 1199SEIU has been a joyful and verdant one in which we have been able to help shape evolving mechanisms for building just this type of member-leadership. Members of 1199 staff have been attending Movement Matters trainings for years, allowing us to build a strong relationship of trust and a common understanding of decolonized popular education and base building. When 1199 staff recognized the need to engage their members in a better understanding of and context for the union’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza, they began to put into place a series of “teach-ins” to engage members around the issue. The Movement Matters team helped to equip 1199 staff with concrete ideas and coaching for how to facilitate these sessions and productively engage in values based conflict de-escalation. 1199’s instinct to use this moment to engage their members in critical reflection and learning is a great example of the steps that are needed to more fully engage labor in a broader movement building. 1199 organizers also recognize the need to more fully embed popular education practices throughout their member engagement. Movement Matters and 1199 organizers prepared an introductory popular education skill-building workshop as part of 1199’s staff convening in Philadelphia this summer. During this workshop, 1199 organizers were able to more deeply understand and discuss how to bring popular education principles into their regular meeting spaces with members. This was a first step in expanding an internal 1199 audience to the principles and practice learned in Movement Matters trainings. We are already planning for a new set of sessions with 1199 staff and members focused on the integration of healing and community care in their membership development practice. We look forward to continuing this relationship and this process, helping 1199 (among a host of other unions) to lead the way in building radical, transformational union organizing. Connect with us for more information about our Technical Assistance and Training work. Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC. We work regionally and with national partners. 
Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Roshi, is an author of two books, a maverick spiritual teacher, master trainer, and founder of Transformative Change. She has been bridging the worlds of personal transformation and justice for decades. Ordained as a Zen "sensei," she is the second black woman recognized as a teacher in her lineage. She is a social visionary that applies wisdom teachings and practice to social issues. Both fierce and grounded, she is known for her unflinching willingness to both sit with and speak uncomfortable truths with love.
Rev. angel offers a simple monthly 4-hour (half-day) or 8-hour (full day) virtual "sit." This small retreat helps us restore and begin a mindful practice of liberation. There are two sessions to accommodate different time zones. The event is by donation, and registration is required. The next Half/Day Sit will take place on October 19th. Attending Rev's Half/Day Sit will open the door to the daily No Big Deal Morning Sits, a shorter "come as you are, leave as you must" daily practice. We invite you to get to know Rev angel's radical and impactful work. Rev angel's Monthly Half/Day Sit Rev angel's Podcasts Transforming an organization from “professional-led” advocacy to community-led advocacy and organizing is not easy or quick work. Since its inception, the Fair Budget Coalition (FBC) has experimented with various models for grounding their budget advocacy in the lived experience of impacted community members. Early on, FBC’s theory was that its member organizations (mostly service provision groups) would engage their clients as leaders in the coalition. Over time, however, FBC realized that most of its organizational members are not structured to hold the needed base building and community engagement to support this model. As a result, professional staff have historically interpreted client experience, analyzed the policy landscape, and developed both FBC’s budget platform and the strategy for winning it. Over the last several years, Movement Matters has partnered with FBC to shift their infrastructure and practice to change this approach. The coalition has incorporated a racial and economic justice lens to their budget platform development. They have begun moving beyond reactive annual budget fights and started focusing on longer term solutions that change the outcomes of the budget and the actual budget process itself. They have built out their staff capacity to not only engage their organizational members, but to work outside of these organizations to build their own constituency of impacted community members. For the last year, Movement Matters has helped FBC create a more focused curriculum and the initial implementation of a Constituent Leadership Program (CLP). The curriculum moves beyond some of the pitfalls of previous leadership development programs, avoiding the dynamics of anointing a group of impacted individuals as tokenistic representatives, but leaving them unable to actually build the power necessary to have their voices heard. Instead, we are grounding the CLP in organizing theory and practice, helping Fair Budget develop a group of leaders who have the skills and experience to actually engage their communities. To use their role as constituent leaders to be more than the mouthpiece for the organization, and instead be a conduit for connecting FBC to impacted communities as leaders in both the development of budget demands and a strategy for building power. We are seeing CLP members respond strongly to these components, naming dynamics in the advocacy process that have felt lacking to them and identifying ways to more deeply engage their community in change efforts. They have explored community-based research as a tool for examining the root causes and interconnectedness of community issues and to build a base of community members committed to building power for their solutions. They are visiting local communities to understand how issues play out across neighborhoods segregated by race and income. They are connecting themselves and others with FBC’s existing infrastructure for shaping its budget platform and engaging with decision-makers. Simultaneously, we are helping FBC staff and existing leadership understand and envision how their work needs to shift if they are, in fact, going to fully integrate this process of constituency building. Through this lens, we are reexamining existing FBC infrastructure for developing a budget platform, for making decisions about campaign strategy, and for allocating organizational resources. The willingness of Fair Budget’s organizational leadership to envision and work towards this transformation is creating dynamic new developments in their work. As always, transformation requires constant attention, adjustment, and sustainment. Even as we implement the CLP curriculum, we are planning for an improved version, one that ties workshop topics to active bodies of work within FBC’s systems. We want to make sure that “a-ha” moments don’t get lost in the shuffle, but are immediately connected to new ways of doing things within the coalition. As we do this work with the community, we are working with staff and leadership to understand the exciting new possibilities available to the Coalition with this type of principled constituent membership. Connect with us for more information on our Technical Assistance and Action Coalitions work. Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC. We work regionally and with national partners. We have already shared about our work in developing Eviction Defense Hubs, a mutual support and organizing model based on the Participatory Defense Hubs created by Silicon Valley De-Bug for the criminal court system. We have continued to partner with the tenant organizing team of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC) to build a robust model in which tenants who are navigating the eviction courts support each other through collective learning, wisdom-sharing, and mutual aid. To date, the dozens of tenants who have moved through this process have left better equipped to fight their eviction, to organize with other tenants in their building, and to better understand the injustices of the housing system. For Movement Matters, a critical part of this process is also connecting tenants’ individual eviction cases to more systemic organizing opportunities; to transform the “little s” self-interest of staying in one’s home, to a “capital S” self-interest of fighting for quality affordable housing for all. We have identified small ways to do this within the Eviction Defense Hubs. For example, we have supported a tenant who is being targeted by their landlord to canvass their building to identify how widespread the harassment is, as well as to connect this canvassing to ongoing efforts to build a strong tenant association in the building. In addition, at the Hub meetings themselves, we have been holding discussions about the eroding city rent support programs and the need for more radical approaches to dealing with the fact that the rent is too damn high. As part of this iterative approach of finding opportunities for more transformative work within the individual cases, we are now in the planning stages for a complementary type of mutual aid/organizing hybrid that we are tentatively calling Participatory Action Hubs (PAH). We recognize that the Eviction Defense Hubs, while incredibly important, are reactive and keep most of the focus on the individual case. They also do not equip tenants to address negligent landlords, particularly around issues of housing code violations and conditions issues. We are currently developing the infrastructure for a parallel tenant-led mutual support model that will help tenants sue their landlord in conditions court, lead rent strikes, or otherwise proactively address bad landlord behavior. We know that the existing court systems are inadequate. Even winning a conditions case in housing court often only results in “patch and paint” approaches to terrible building conditions or minimal fines that landlords can ignore. However, we know that if we approach this work as part of an organizing process, it can become a strategic tool for tenant action. For instance:
All of this work becomes possible when we create community-based infrastructure that is grounded in broad tenant leadership, guided by a clear vision and values, and fosters a culture of critical reflection and adaptation. Connect with us for more information on our Technical Assistance and Action Coalitions work. Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC. We work regionally and with national partners. |
