Last week, we joined with other members of the Richmond Transparency and Accountability Project (RTAP) to host their first “Organizing School,” a place for community members to learn more about the theories and methods of community organizing.
Facilitated by LAJC organizers Yohance Whitaker and Harold Folley, with support from other current RTAP members and LAJC staff, a group of ten new community organizers spent a full day working through what it means to do this important work, including examining the values, tools, and dynamics that go into successfully increasing collective power, building leaders, and winning tangible results.
LAJC staff with the first class of RTAP’s “Organizing School”
RTAP member Khalah Sabbakhan said about the training, “The Organizing School was a major landmark in enhancing my understanding of our mission, values, and goals. It was uplifting, empowering, and transformative. I was able to free myself from the inhibitions that improving our lives was over my head. I see our vision and where we’re going. The blinders are gone.”
LAJC, in partnership with local community groups, has hosted a number of organizing trainings like this in the past, and more are on the way.
In our most recent strategic plan we say ,“It is critical that we build trusting relationships with communities directly harmed by systemic racism. We want to meet a community’s urgent needs for survival by providing them with individualized legal help, while also helping them build their power as a group so that they can shape their own futures.”
This is just one important way we are striving to achieve that goal.
