#community-organizing

#community-organizing

Over 2,000 queer activists and organizers from across the U.S. descended on Washington, D.C., last week to attend Creating Change, the nation's foremost political, leadership, and skills-building conference for the LGBTQ+ movement. The event marked the conference's 38th annual gathering since it began in 1988. If you've never been, the six-day conference features over 100 workshops and caucuses, day-long identity-based institutes led by community educators, keynote presentations by distinguished activists, and awards ceremonies honoring trailblazing queer civil rights pioneers.

You ran because you liked running. We watched films because we liked them. We read books because we fancied reading books. These activities stitched meaning into the fabric of daily life. But today, there's a relentless insistence that leisure needs to justify itself in order to be valid. The pressure to find niche hobbies and interests against which to identify ourselves has, Mina Le argues, become an ego problem - one which ultimately feeds an 'individualistic neoliberal culture that makes community organising so much harder.'

"What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience," wrote Hannah Arendt in her 1951 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. I was born and raised in Chicagoland. Even during stints of travel and education, I have always considered myself a Chicagoan.

When we sat down with the organizers, one of my mentors asked them, "Who are the people that can pick up the phone, call the governor, and know that, nine times out of ten, he will do whatever they ask?" This may sound like a strange question to ask, but the reality-which too many don't know and too many in power don't want revealed-is that these people exist throughout our polity at the local, state, and national levels.

Lily Rodriguez approaches a woman selling elotes outside a subway station in Queens. She buys one, but what she's truly looking for is to earn the vendor's trust, and find a way to offer her a whistle. Rodriguez was accompanied by other volunteers who were similarly engaged in passing out whistles to every passer-by, distributing more than 200 of the instruments meant to make noise on the New York City streets.

At the core of Pyaari Azaadi's diasporic artistic genius lies the belief that to do something fully and in an embodied way, one must immerse oneself in the storms of the heart, where our emotional and physical selves congeal as both metaphor and sacred koan. It is in that space - where even light is dimmed - that we live our truth, the elusive state that all people of conscience strive to hold.

groups that are on the ground here in Chicagoland, helping people understand their rights, whether they're citizens, residents, or undocumented.

In Monona, a suburban city of around 9,000 residents just outside the capital city of Madison, around 400 people lined one of the busiest corners of the main street of the city. Protesters held signs in opposition to President Donald Trump, took part in cross-street chanting, and encouraged vehicles to honk their car horns in support - which dozens of cars did.

What is artivism? We define artivism as art that is meant for social and environmental change. Basically, we call an artivist someone with three facets. First, they have to be a strong and recognized artist whether they dance, sing, paint, write poetry, etc. Their art should touch people's hearts, minds and dreams. Second, their work should be rooted in their own community. That can be a neighborhood, a city, a region, or demographic, but it should be serving, inspiring

Brendan Griffith was elected by over one million workers across New York to serve as president of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

"We believe that part of making good trouble is community building and getting organized so that when the time comes to make some kind of good trouble, you have people on your side," said Tal Karsten, an organizer with 50501 San Jose.

Advocates rallied outside the federal courthouse, emphasizing the situation surrounding Guillermo Medina Reyes, a Bay Area community organizer, who has lived in the U.S. since age six.

We need to see demonstrations as organizing opportunities, to connect new people to the growing movement challenging Trump's regime.

The trauma from both incidents, Brou said, has stayed with him to this day.