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Shilpa: Developing capacity and fostering active listening with partners. Leadership development.

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Two things in the reading struck me:
1. Developing the capacity of members to speak with their own voices, and our capacity to listen
2. Anyone can be a leader. That isn't just the facilitator.

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When I was new to Public Advocates, I was told I wasn't an organizer. But it makes me think that there's a need for more on-the-ground staff support. We want to turn towards that in Higher Ed. What would it look like to get direct student voice in our work, beyond my being a liaison? Get actual students involved.

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See Karina's and Erin's responses to Q 1

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John: Among the organizers that we work with, PICO CA is the most decentralized. Their model is a federation of 26 different local nonprofits. Everyone who works with them is a leader. They have been the most challenging to work with -- what is the statewide input/direction from PICO? They have certain chapters lead on education and other chapters lead on criminal justice work. They are the most authentic. ACCE, who we don't work with that much in education any more, they are the most top down. It's a group of really smart organizer advocates who seem to run their housing agenda. They call the shots and are the least authentic. CFJ has been in between, they have chapters they listen to, and they have gotten better at listening to student voice and letting that direct their work.

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Organizing skill of listening is super important, makes a big difference in how strategic decisions are made, in who is consulted, etc.

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Working with organizers in the transportation justice space, I learned to rethink how I approached coordinating public comment for public meetings. I would often ask the staff organizers to provide testimony, but they would (rightfully) push back and emphasize the need to use such opportunities for their members to develop their leadership skills and ownership. Having staff testify in such instances would be a missed opportunity at best or harmful to their goals at worst.

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Winning change plus building power: power entails building capacity. It's about the visibility of our grassroots orgs and leaders, powerful and profound experience leading the work, and bringing that back despite how fast state advocacy moves. How to slow that down to be in process with partners.

Also, in outline of the article, there was something about transformative vs transactional partners. We are explicit about which partners are ongoing transformational ones, but also have some transactional partners. Don't want to risk confusing the two

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Suzie: There is a tension between well-established community based organizations and newer burgeoning groups that might really need our capacity-building.

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From perspective of organizer, really struggled to be democratic and functional. Most organizations struggled with that, but have not quite figured it out. Different ppl have different ideas about what it means to be democratic. One member really wants to move in one direction and it raised questions that goes beyond the capacity to have conversations with the membership. Real democracy is not possible without good political education and transparent decisionmaking. if a lot of things happen without

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From perspective of organizer, really struggled to be democratic and functional. Most organizations struggled with that, but have not quite figured it out. Different ppl have different ideas about what it means to be democratic. One member really wants to move in one direction and it raised questions that goes beyond the capacity to have conversations with the membership. Real democracy is not possible without good political education and transparent decisionmaking. if a lot of things happen without

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CA PFL was designed to be transformational, long-term alliance. Years went into planning and designing that before first campaign. That demonstrates how we work as a democratic org. It can be hard to build into that if it's not designed that way upfront.

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Facing organizers who are demanding to be put on a pedestal -- not even front line organizers. Setting pretty aggressive accountability tactics with non-organizing groups. 

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Facing organizers who are demanding to be put on a pedestal -- not even front line organizers. Setting pretty aggressive accountability tactics with non-organizing groups. 

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Cindy: 7th section about movement solidarity spoke to me. Author spoke about how in their org, when they did have a breakdown in relationship, they were able to take a step and learn about their base to decide -- do we want to remain a multiracial org or split it up? In our work, we often do see that division between black and brown folks sometimes.

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We need to temper our sense of urgency. Competing forces, we need to be comfortable with giving things time to marinate. We do that by having debrief sessions right after workshops. We reflect, and that period can be really helpful. Sometimes the time needed to reflect is important to reach the right conclusions about pluses and deltas

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Very hard to determine if input that organizers bring into conversation are based on input from base.

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Very hard to determine if input that organizers bring into conversation are based on input from base.

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Leadership Council's model is about helping facilitate advocacy and build up organizing model where it hasn't yet been utilized.

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Hard to kick off authentic relationships at first in Higher Ed. We weren't able to build off K12 partners, so started from scratch, very difficult. I felt sense of urgency. I pushed back on that. Saw importance of making new relationships. If I'm going to reach out to someone, I should have something to offer. At the beginning, I didn't want to reach out with empty promises, it felt uncomfortable.

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John: Key question: To what extent are our partners building sustainable power and win change that will meaningfully impact people's lives? We come at it with a natural prejudice toward winning the win and need to fight to keep them in balance.

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State v. local - much harder to have democratic decisionmaking for state advocacy members. Feeling stuck in spaces where base-building groups want to show up, but the way in which they feel like is powerful to engage - doing 

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State v. local - much harder to have democratic decisionmaking for state advocacy members. Feeling stuck in spaces where base-building groups want to show up, but the way in which they feel like is powerful to engage - doing 

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There's a tension about the "othering" of us from community members, we're also community members in our communities. PA isn't a member-based, community-based organization and we have a hierarchical structure, in contrast with organizing models that our partners may have.

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Debbie: Black public service sororities work with very small community-based organizations that PA is not used to work with. We are more of a direct services support group. What Richard has inspired me to do is look at some PA campaigns and see if I can inspire sorority members, particularly leadership, to engage.