New Flashmob Video Calls For Accountability of State Legislatures, 2011 Congress The lively, grassroots video was created by the Pushback Network and partner organizations Community Voices Heard, SouthWest Organizing Project and Southwest Workers Union to put pressure on state legislatures and Congress to represent the people’s agenda 365 days of the year—not just on Election Day.
By: Brigid Flaherty, Organizational and Resource Director of Pushback Network
A lively, new political flash mob video hitting the internet today sends a message tonewly elected representatives: govern in a manner that best serves the needs of all constituents, including people of color and working people.
In a truly grassroots effort, the video was conceived, produced and staged by community members themselves — people who have been hit hardest by the economic collapse and yet participate in the political process because they see the need for government to create a nation that works for all of us.
Pushback Network is fired up about the US Social Forum!
From June 22-26th, over 200 members from the 9 Pushback State Alliances are uniting in Detroit to strengthen our collective efforts and craft visions of liberation and justice.
Seeing as the time has come for us to build collective power in this milieu of massive unemployment, SB 1070, the oil spill, de-funding of public education, foreclosures and the bank bailouts, Pushback has constructed a strong program that highlights the diverse, multi-issue, multi-region, multi-constituency nature of our network.
You can catch us in Detroit sponsoring the following workshops, convention, and party:
Sustainable Communities Organizer, Community Voices Heard
June 1, 2010
Ground Breaking Experience: Lessons from Mass Base Organizing
By visiting with our brothers and sisters in Albuquerque NM with the South West Organizing Project, I gained valuable insights into the model of organizing they call MASS BASE WORK. In preparation for our own election cycle in NY, I got to see first hand how SWOP approaches electoral work separate from ongoing campaign development, membership recruitment, and leadership development.
What they have is a separate track that acknowledges the opportunities for civic engagement that elections bring with them, while also recognizing the limitations of peoples lives that is not always conducive to becoming active members. In this sense, they have developed a whole strategy (MASS BASE), that seeks to develop shallower, but broader relations, with a much wider constituency of people that are not being engaged to be members. Rather, the goals of the mass base work seeks to build a collective of people that on some level, recognize SWOP and the image of the Campaign For A Better New Mexico, share the same progressive values, and are moveable to a small action step – usually voting, making a phone call, writing a letter, etc. [Read more]
Independent Sector will honor Community Voices Heard with the 2009 American Express Building Leadership Award for empowering low-income people in New York City and State to advocate for public policy changes that improve their lives. CVH will receive its award, which includes a gift of $10,000, at the Independent Sector Annual Conference in Detroit, November 4-6. [Read more]
North Star Fund is presenting Community Voices Heard with the Frederick Douglass Award at its 2009 30th Anniversary Community Gala. This award is given to community organizations creating equality, economic justice and peace.
Please join them on April 30th for a memorable evening among philanthropists, activists, business and labor leaders, and grassroots organizers who applaud CVH’s vision of democracy and social justice.
Click here to find out how to join the Leadership Committee or buy tickets.
The gala will be on April 30, 2009 from 6-10pm at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York City.
Pushback Network (PBN) proudly welcomes accomplished social justice leader Peter Hardie as its new Executive Director.
Emphasizing community organizing and voter engagement strategies to empower underrepresented constituencies, PBN continues to grow as an organization assisting people in defining their mutual interests and working together to improve their lives.
“Peter is ideally poised to help lead the Pushback Network as a facilitator and as a leader in the national and local struggles for justice and democracy,” said PBN Chair Robby Rodriguez. “Currently, PBN is developing and implementing voter engagement and other civic participation strategies in eight states: New York, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, and California. We foster collaborative efforts to increase the effectiveness of groups doing community organizing and non-partisan electoral work on the ground. Peter Hardie is an ideal fit for PBN because his career has combined organizing, advocacy and activism with significant experience and practice in organizational assessment and development. He has worked side by side with coalitions across the country and internationally to build grassroots political power from the bottom up. Peter has coached and advised a diverse range of organizations and knows how to encourage the best outcomes from them.” [Read more]
“But the city welfare agency says it’s doing as well as possible under federal welfare rules.”
By Matt Schwarzfeld
Fernando Le’Bron has provided legal assistance to welfare recipients since the 1980s. Ever since welfare reform took hold in New York City a decade ago, he’s seen a steady increase in the percentage of his clients on public assistance who are unable to work because of a physical or mental disability or a substance abuse problem. This is in part a reflection of the city’s success in moving “work ready” people—those who do not have a physical or mental barrier to employment—off of welfare and into jobs. Viewed from this perspective, the city has had success in promoting greater self-sufficiency.
But the story of welfare reform hardly ends there. Le’Bron, a paralegal with the Queens Legal Services Corporation, says that though his clients nowadays have more complex needs than ever, they are at greater risk of being “sanctioned,” or punished through a reduction in benefits. The Human Resources Administration (HRA), the city agency that administers cash assistance, “has been very proficient in sanctioning people,” Le’Bron said. “They haven’t been so successful in helping them avoid sanctions in the first place.”
A recent report by the nonprofit group Community Voices Heard (CVH), a membership organization of low-income people, found that HRA’s efforts to place work-ready clients in sustainable jobs through the three-year-old Back to Work program has hit a wall. The report suggests that the high sanction rate and poor job placement and retention rates demonstrate that HRA needs to re-think the shape of its “work-first” approach to welfare. Coming at a time when work itself is harder to find than it used to be, some are paying attention. [Read more]
DO: Approach key local and regional groups before the strategy is set. Tailor efforts to the culture and politics of individual communities. No state is one community. Incoming organizers should seek synergies with existing work.
DON’T: Bait and switch. Be clear and honest with grassroots organizers about intentions and objectives. [Read more]
Follow The Project, PBN’s live, daily, multi-media civic engagement project every day through November 7th. To lead us off, PBN is publishing a few critically important pieces that look at the importance of sound investment in effective civic organizing. Click here for updates.
During the 2006 electoral season, PBN partner Kentuckians for the Commonwealth learned first hand how paratrooper tactics disrupt years’ worth of work in their communities. According to nationally based, numbers-centric guidelines, national groups did a better job targeting the KFTC’s population, and reached more people.
But a closer look shows that while KFTC contacted a third of the people the national paratrooping group reached, they did it for a tenth of the money. KFTC’s numbers, unlike those of the paratroopers, reflected three person-to-person contacts for each individual counted. KFTC’s contacts included civic education and leadership development on a personal level – a crucial benefit that lasts, and one that you can’t get from mailings or robocalls. [Read more]
Follow The Project, Pushback Network’s Election 2008 Multi-Media Project online through your social networks, at our Project Updates Blog, or on Friend Feed and watch history happen with updates all day, every day through Election Week!
We’re going to the battlegrounds of New Mexico and Mississippi November 1-7, 2008, to show what the work our partners are doing to fuse community organizing and voter engagement and mobilize people of color, poor people, and young people looks like — in action and in near-real-time using photos, videos, micro-bloggging and more. Check back each day to see where we are with preparations, and see the organizing work happen through the post-election wind-up November 7th. [Read more]
