Organizing in Action!
September 9th, 2008 by Judith Bell
This has been a lively discussion about community organizers and why they matter. I thought I would add a story to showcase the role of organizers, the different kinds of impacts they have, and the different kinds of people who end-up as organizers. I’m hoping that others will add their own stories, so we can underscore how deep and wide the culture of organizing is, and how many different kinds of people are organizing in communities, large and small, across the country. Here’s the story-from rural California, north of Sacramento…
The Wal-Mart in Anderson, Calif., may look like any other. But thanks to community organizers, several check-out lanes are now lined with healthy snacks - trail mix, granola bars, dried cranberries, diced peaches, and animal crackers - instead of the junk food that normally populates the impulse-buy aisle.
The organizers responsible for this progress probably don’t fit the harsh stereotypes of the profession we’ve been hearing about recently. They’re just regular neighborhood students - part of Kids Make A Stand, a project to promote healthy eating in Shasta County.
The students made a pretty compelling case to store manager Tim Trimble that the healthy snacks would help develop their bodies and minds.
“They put me on the spot in a big way, but in a good way,” Trimble told the Redding Record-Searchlight newspaper.
The students designed the “Kids Healthy Choices” stands in two check-out aisles and hoped people would respond. The reaction has been phenomenal. 
Since the project began, sales of the healthy snacks have doubled.
The kids of Anderson continue organizing for positive change. They’ve made presentations to the managers of the Wal-Mart stores in Redding and Red Bluff, who are replicating the healthy food aisles in their own stores. The also plan to lobby the Anderson City Council for an ordinance to have healthy food sections in every store in the area.
Kids Make A Stand is a project of the South Shasta Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC) initiative. HEAC is a four-year, $26-million initiative to combat childhood obesity, spearheaded by The California Endowment. The project increases opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating throughout California and develops policies to reduce the risk factors for diabetes and obesity.
Kids Make A Stand is one of many efforts Shasta County HEAC has undertaken, and one of several that show the power of young people when they’re organized and focused on making change. In another example, young people’s organized efforts helped convince the City of Anderson to install sidewalks along the road to a skate park and pressed the Anderson parks director to refurbish park restrooms and replace basketball nets. They have helped farmers in unincorporated Happy Valley create a trail map to encourage purchase of local produce and to preserve agriculture in the community. Farmers report an increase in visits to their farms.
These projects are making a big difference in the area. It’s the organizers and those who participate that make the difference.
“HEAC is becoming part of the psyche of this community,” says Sheryl Vietti of Shasta County Public Health, a partner in the Shasta County HEAC project. “There’s a growing awareness that people care about healthy eating and physical activity. And the community has been receptive and responsive to all of our efforts.”
Please share your stories of successful organizing in the comments.
Judith Bell is president of PolicyLink and an experienced organizer for policy change.
Photo of Kids Make A Stand students by Michael Woodward, reporter, Anderson Valley Post. From left to right, Jonni Hinton, Emily LaFayette, Ally LaFayette, James LaRiza and Rebecca LaRiza.
Tags: active living, california endowment, community organizing, HEAC, healthy eating, kids make a stand
September 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I wanted to share this picture I came across and speaks volumes about community organizing.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I wish we could get more of the ground swell against the short-sighted attacks on community organizers into the mainstream where it belongs. The international arena was witness to a well packaged and ill advised speech that broad-sided an on-going movement that was the launching pad that inspired those children in California as well as the returning Vets in Northern PA who I am assisting to provide a support system for the returnin vets from a war that we keep being told we are “winning” but the hyped results and savvy PRspeak is overshadowing the real picture, the tragic deaths and the untold dilemmas that is facing vets who are here now and suffering and those whose feelings will be hurt when they get back and find out that the country they risked their life for will no support their efforts to heal because they will not acknowledge that their mental illness and subsequent problems were a result of their military “adventure”…for someone running for office to belittle the vital role of those of us in the domestic trenches dealing with health disparities and social injustice just rings further proof to the lack of connection the individual has on real world issues and what it happening in the rest of this country and someone needs to be on that same platform and let her and the rest know it.
Someone needs to tell the whole story behind that speech — how the plane she sold on e-bay was not sold by her and the effort was at a loss to boot. That her stealing the credit for a project that was in the works for years is a cheap shot at grapping public support from a nation too desperate to seek the truth and grabbing at crumbs and buying the lies. Let’s talk about morality and practicing what you preach (and the teenage pregnancy is not the issue I mean), I mean the statement about being an advocate for special needs children and cutting that funding in your own state…and to have a east coast mayor who cheated on his own wife on tax payers money is beyond hypocrisy and the problem with hypocrisy is that it cannot hide for long…. I would rather be a community organizer and make a positive and proactive difference any day then a smooth talking politician who neither speaks truth to power or can represent my country or gender….back to the trenches I go to try to meet the needs of the many one community at a time
September 9th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Bumper sticker idea -
Jesus was a community organizer.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
He was also “liberal and inexperienced.” Just think what he could have done with the internet
Keep on keeping on!
September 10th, 2008 at 11:10 am
The button is already out. It says. Hey Palin, Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor.
September 13th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Well, Gustav and Ike have passed us leaving in it’s wake our communities damaged and irrevocably changed…but we go on. In Plaquemines Parish levee’s broke and the unabated waters rushed in flooding homes and roads. right now we are stuck in the lower end of the parish and power is out…but we go on. FEMA can’t get to us…other resources can’t get to us…but we go on. Power is off and on and the heat is unbearable at times but we go on…our small church has brought in, seeing the possibilities, 140,000 pounds of food and water; meat, butane burners and generators. Over 1000 men, women and children are trapped in this community and services and help is held back from us by 20 miles of road flooded. here is a bit of my journal and board report…G.H.C.M-C.T.E.D Center
Hurricane Gustav/Ike Programs Update
Within a three week span, the residents of Plaquemines Parish have sustained damage and withstood two major storms. Road flooding, 40 to 50 mph winds, power outages and road closures have been our lot these past three difficult weeks. In all Grace Harbour Christian Ministries has stood with the people of Plaquemines Parish. Our ability to serve the people of Plaquemines Parish is due to the help, caring and reaching out of our partners to us as an organization and to the people of Plaquemines Parish through our organization.
With the onset of a mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Gustav, 40 residents, men, women and children…families with elderly and infirm people sought information and assistance from our organization. We evacuated them, my staff and my family to Robert, La. to Jelly Stone Park, where we found 6 cabins available. After 3 day there we lost power and water and was forced to relocate the group. Half went to Baton Rouge and the other half went with us to Gulf Port, MS. After 9 days we returned home to set up Relief Operations.
Once home, we received a delivery of 22 pallets of food and water from America’s Second Harvester Food Bank, one our long time partners. This was approximately 75,000 pounds which myself and 5 community volunteers unloaded by hand, this was Monday, September 8, 2008. By the evening, we had served 150 hot meals ( hamburgers and jambalaya) and given out 250 food boxes.
On Tuesday, we coordinated our effort with parish government informing them of our operation and services, this was supposed to be put on the parish web-site and we met with Parish president Billy Nungesser and Councilman B. Turner to see how we could assist the parish wide effort. Tuesday, we served 340 meals at our site and delivered over 150 meals to those in our immediate area. In addition to the hot meals we served 120 residents with food boxes. Wednesday, brought more of the same delivering 180 food boxes and 200 hot meals. Thursday, we delivered 279 hot meals driving over 100 miles throughout the lower end of the parish and served 165 food boxes. The weather from hurricane Ike had winds at 30 mph sustained and gusts to 50 mph+. With residents staying inside and off the roads in this weather we loaded the food and supplies on our small tandem trailer and drove delivering hot meals to people at their homes until the weather got to bad for us about 10:30 pm that night.
Friday, we saw just 110 people at our center delivering to them a hot meal and food boxes, we took our red beans and rice on the road once more delivering 80 meals until it was too dark and the wind was too bad for us to continue safely.
On Friday we received another delivery of 20 pallets of food, water and cleaning supplies…84,000 pounds again we unloaded it by hand with our community volunteers and immediately began organizing it and handing out food boxes.As we have returned to assist the people of our community there have been many challenges. We have had to take our distribution of hot meals on the road reaching people who have no transportation or fuel to get to us. Wit the passing of Hurricane Ike we have been trapped in the lower end of the parish as we have 4 feet of water on the road from a levee breach at two different locations, one just 10 miles in West Point ala Hache and another 20 miles north of that in Pointe Celeste. Over the last 24 hours the water has risen and not subsided enough for the road to be passable.
Many residents have had emergency needs such as cell phone bills due and being cut off, electric bills due and Entergy refusing to give them power. These residents were cut off from their banks and have not worked in weeks due to these two storms and were in dire need. These cases were only two families with small children and one family with a very sick child and family member. Electric and communications I consider a critical need as we are trapped down here with little or no help except us.
When we evacuated for Gustav we took 40 men, women and children with us who had no other alternative and turned to us for help. I could not in good conscience refuse them as many were elderly and sick. I have lost family, community members and friends during the Katrina “Diaspora” due to the stress they endured in the mass shelters across this country that they went to. I just had to do what I could to help these few…saving just those I could…those God saw fit to send to me, for they trusted US enough to come and ask for help and because of you they received care, food, shelter and assistance to be safe and return home as stress free as we could possibly make it. One man, Lester is dying of cancer…he has a tracheotomy/stoma and required suctioning regularly. He is suffering and I feel blessed that I could help this man in some small way…we both know what would have happened if he were in a mass, government run shelter with 1000 people.
Today, Saturday, September 13, 2008, our partners…community churches and their pastors came and labored. They were River of Life-Pastor Paul and Pastor Andrew; Port Sulphur Baptist Church- Pastor’s Lynn and Nicolle Rodrigue and Jesus call Missionary Baptist Church-Pastor Reece LaCrosse along with 20 community members. Our partnerships are strong and our resolve to help one another resolute. We served 587 hot meals and gave out 650 food boxes to residents from all over the lower end of Plaquemines Parish. No parish official or Government agency has come to even see what we are doing or if we are ok…we have checked on one another and helped one another because to the empowerment YOU have given us through you generous support.
We purchased 3 box freezers; 6 generators; (4) 110v a/c units; (10) heavy duty amp extension cords; meat for meals; utensils and plates; a multiple burner butane platform; 3 butane tanks and 2 pots. Organizationally we replaced our lap top, which crashed during the evacuation and our video camera that got wet in our storage. These purchases have enabled us to operate our feeding program and food box distribution for the long term as residents will need this support in the coming months until services stabilize.
Next Steps
The damage from winds and flooding, have left our parish in a very unstable condition. Power is off and on frequently, water is still questionable as to safety, there are damaged homes and damaged lives. We will continue to support the people of Plaquemines Parish through this difficult time with food, safe drinking water, hot meals and informational meetings. Tomorrow will be our first Sunday post hurricanes and we have much to be thankful for. We are positioned for the long term and will be making the minor repairs to our facility.
Conclusion
Thanks to the gracious help and support from our partners across the country, we will continue to fight on o rebuild our lives, our homes and our communities. GHCM has developed, worked and put in place effective programs that reach people where the need is and we have and continue to make a difference in the lives of our people and community.
We will continue to update you on our program and progress. Please keep us in your prayers as we have many challenges ahead and much work to do. My wife, my staff and myself are working 18 hour days preparing, cleaning and serving our community and it is Blessed work. We thank you all for your past, current and continued support as we struggle on. Please keep me and my community in your prayers.
Blessings….
Rev. Dr. Martin Denesse
This what good planning, forsight and working together can do!
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I looked SO bad! lol.