Verde Smoke
organizing
About Yes We Will campaign in Lawrence MA
[More info on a campaign that Lawrence CommunityWorks is devising to empower citizens to get involved in local political campaigns and citizen journalism - they need help developing new media tools to support these efforts!]
Campaign Wake Up Call
[Week 10 04/09/08:
I set the wake-up time on my campaign to a leisurely half-past Lawrence, because I made a conscious choice to ground my efforts in graduate school in a community where some people believe time stopped when all the mills closed. I lay my head on my pillow, full of hope that after the fall semester’s work, I’d be attune to the rhythm of change in that place. Then I sought out a stable/successful youth empowerment organization and a group of young constituents and leaders. I again thought I could easily step into the rhythm of their existing programs and add some capacity to take community change a step further than individual advancement. I set some personal milestones to complete a campaign, unknowingly trying to mimic the style of Gersick’s described as proactive, temporal pacing strategy.
My Strategy is Candy
[Week 4: 03/12/08] Why is my strategy like a Tootsie-Pop? My reflections this week will be both around my project’s strategy [candy shell] and my own “meta” strategy to work with these youth [chocolaty center]. Thus, I have two organizing statements: (1) On the surface, I’m organizing a leadership team of YouthBuild Lawrence youth to stop the pollution of community spaces but really I’m (2) starting with a small group of youth in Lawrence to raise their voices and call for change in their community.
One-On-One Leaps
[Week 3 03/05/08]: He hesitated, then asked me why I was there. After thirty straight minutes of almost continuous talking about himself, in my last one-on-one of the day, this 22 year old lifelong Lawrence resident, father, and would be jack-of-all-trades, looked straight in my eyes and turned the tables on me completely.
Confessions of a Leadership Training Junkie
[Week 2 02/27/08] People have asked me why I care so much and why I volunteer to lead so often.
Excerpts from my new journey into organizing
[WARNING: Yes, I’m journaling for a class again. I’m not sure if these self reflective experiences find me or I find them. Nevertheless, I’m writing weekly reflection papers about a hands-on project I’m doing as part of Marshall Ganz’s “Organizing: People, Power and Change” class at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
