Organizing: Jobs and Issues 

by Michelle Olivier

          Community Organizing is something that goes on around us all the time. It is something we do not necessarily see, but something that we are affected by on different levels. Organizing deals with different global issues on the multiple levels of person-to-person, community wide, city wide, across the country, and globally. There are ways to be involved with bettering a community on all types of levels and with many different issues. With the Inland Empire Sponsoring Committee – IAF, I was able to learn about organizing issues such as Environment, Public Health, Labor, and Public Education. I have been interested in human trafficking, street children, and gang work in the past and through this internship have been able to take a step back and really be consumed with issues that the public faces on a daily basis that I never really understood before. I have always wanted to work with the poor on issues that I feel are not confronted every day yet have learned now that I had did not have my eyes open enough to what was going on around me.

            Organizing against the building of a waste transfer station in the poor city of Pomona (CA) is one organizing effort in which I was able to get involved. I had never thought of where my trash goes, who it affects, and that there are people fighting health issues because of the way trash is processed and moved. I was able to learn through this internship the process of organizing to literally save homes, health, and actually lives. It is easy to assume that our city council would not allow something damaging to the people in their city to happen but I learned that money can make people do anything. I was proud to sit in the crowd as a member of an IESC group and listen to the sides, form my own opinion, and see how people were fighting for this cause. Meeting with Rev. Bob Linthicum, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Pomona and our mentor afterward to debrief and evaluate was really beneficial because we could follow up with any questions we had, hear the background information, and follow closely the steps being taken. I watched live debates go on, saw people sign petitions, and took a seat in meetings that really made a change in peoples’ lives. This internship changed the way I view community organizing and encouraged me to get involved further. It is an effort to attend meetings, lose some debates, have to prove a case that seems impossible against the larger powers, but it is worth it to see what a community can do.

            Along with the meetings that many different groups attended I was able to attend a church that was part of IESC. We sat in the pews with some of the leaders of these movements that the IESC was fighting and was able to see how this is part of that church’s life. The church as a body verbalized concerns in the community, gave each other updates on past concerns, and took on the issues the IESC was working with and prayed for them during their Sunday service. They are a solid body of community organizers that have embodied the mission of God for fighting for the rights of the poor in their daily lives and in their church. I loved how the members of the church would show up at a lot of the meetings that I attended; it was comforting to feel like part of the group by seeing familiar faces and having people to sit with.

            My role in this internship was to attend meetings that the IESC attended or hosted, meet with Bob Linthicum on a monthly basis while reading his book, Building A People of Power, and have held at least four relational meetings with people each week. I chose to go to meetings for all the different issues with which IESC was working at local, citywide and regional levels. This was good for me because I wanted to see the levels of commitment, how the meetings were ran, and which meeting a person could engage with most. There was meetings of eight people to meetings of thirty people, all of which I connected to but decided that I liked the bigger meetings. There was more action, opposing opinions, and adrenaline rushing through me as I heard both sides of the story. I grew a passion for righteousness to be done in this community because I actually knew who it was affecting and saw how hard they were working to fight these issues.

            One of the issues that the IESC has taken on in which I had the opportunity to attend meetings was lack of jobs for ethnic and racial minorities in the Inland Empire of southern California (where IESC is organizing). The group has been working on getting at the root of the problem - not just a quick fix. It was hard for me to hear all these details and statistics and know the group was put to a stand still while waiting for responses from many people. They are working on developing job training that would give the unemployed experience and knowledge enough to get higher wages and employment for longer times. They have 24 people signed up for the class, funding for all the materials, a place to have the classes, jobs lined up for those who complete the training, yet are waiting for a teacher.[1] I was upset that I couldn’t call these possible teachers and demand that they come better the lives of 24 people instead of dismissing it because it was 20 minutes out of their way. Of course this would get the group nowhere and instead they decided to lift up the issue in prayer. Patience and guidance through prayer are very important things that community organizers need to have; I was taught this lesson at almost every meeting I attended. I will still struggle with desiring quick answers and solutions through things that I want done rather than honing the patience that is necessary to see complicated issues come to resolution.   

            My internship with the IESC honestly changed my life. I learned so much, met so many people working behind the scenes, made many contacts, and found a desire to work with organizing. I am about to leave on a journey overseas for five months and I hope to bring what I learned through this internship with me. I know God works through the people in the places He brings them. Whatever city, home, job, or church He brings someone to that follows Him, He is choosing to bless. I watched Him bless Pomona over the last four months and I hope that He continues to place my steps in areas that can benefit from the knowledge I learned this semester. I am really glad that I was able to have these experiences and I am excited to see where this takes me in the future.

Executive Summary:

            I learned so much from my internship with IESC and through the mentorship of Bob Linthicum. I was able to listen to how communities fought and prayed for their rights, heard how much planning went into a single meeting, and learned how important the reflection process is after planning meetings. My eyes were opened to this world of community organizing in local communities and how God really is working toward justice all around us. This internship has developed in me a desire to organize in poor communities globally, given me lessons on how to do this, and taught me the steps to take in order to be successful at it.

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