 Organizer Roundtable Resource: The Ecology of OrganizingFriday, May 28, 2010
In April and May of 2010, organizers from throughout the Twin Cities came together for two Alliance for Metropolitan Stability Organizer Roundtables to learn about and discuss the Ecology of Organizing, a system of thinking that recognizes an ecosystem of social justice organizing happening right now in the Twin Cities. Organizer Roundtable Resource: Community Partnerships for SuccessWednesday, February 24, 2010
Alliance member group Twin Cities LISC provided this excellent article summarizing the shared learning among organizers who attended our February Organizer Roundtable on Community Partnership for Success. The roundtable was a chance for organizers to "convey their excitement and frustration in the challenges and rewards of developing cross-sector partnerships." Organizer Roundtable: Developing Leadership for Sustainable OrganizingWednesday, February 3, 2010
At the heart of organizing is developing leadership that can guide and influence a community or organization toward accomplishing its goals. Enhancing current leadership capacity and ensuring a pipeline of future leaders is crucial to ensuring long-term organizational success. This resource summarizes the Alliance's Organizer Roundtable on Development Leadership for Sustainable Organizing, held January 27, 2010. Evaluating Our Transportation Future: How Federal Spending Influences Local Transportation Planning and What Communities Can Do About ItWednesday, January 20, 2010
Right now is a critical moment for local communities to understand how federal transit project evaluation criteria affect decisions that will happen right in our own backyards. A recent announcement from the Federal Transit Administration states that the agency will now take livability criteria into consideration when evaluating projects for federal funding. They will also “initiate a separate rulemaking process, inviting public comment on ways to appropriately measure all the benefits that result from such (transit) investments.” This means that communities planning for major future public transportation will be able to provide input into how those projects will be evaluated by the federal government. Furthermore, by 2011, Congress is expected to pass the next six-year federal surface transportation bill to guide our nation’s transportation spending. This bill will have tremendous implications for how new transitways and roads are designed and constructed in the Twin Cities and around the country. With so many communities in Minnesota – from North Minneapolis to the western suburbs, and from the Central Corridor Transportation Stimulus in Minnesota: Increasing Equity or Exacerbating Disparities?Wednesday, January 20, 2010
When it passed in February 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was a beacon of hope for many low-income communities and communities of color. An important guiding principle for ARRA states that funds should be used to assist those most impacted by the recession. Communities of color, which have historically borne the greatest unemployment burden, saw the stimulus bill as an opportunity to challenge the status quo in how public investments are allocated to communities around our nation. So how have we done so far? With nearly a year of implementation behind us, people are raising questions about how much of the stimulus funding actually reached communities of color. There has been a particular interest in how stimulus funds were spent on infrastructure projects – rebuilding our nation’s roads, bridges and transit systems. This is because a significant portion of the stimulus funding went to those projects, but also because infrastructure projects are relatively high paying and accessible to low-income people and people of color. In this paper, we examine how stimulus funds were spent on transportation infrastructure investments in Minnesota. Did people of color receive their fair share of transportation stimulus funding? Or did our state fall short in meeting the recovery act’s goal to benefit the people most impacted by the recession? Organizer Roundtable Resource: Leveraging Community Benefits from Transitway DevelopmentMonday, January 4, 2010
On December 16, 2009, Anne White of District Councils Collaborative, Diane Dube of William Mitchell College of Law Community Development Clinic and Hussein Samatar of the African Development Center spoke at an Alliance for Metropolitan Stability Organizer Roundtable about their efforts to convene community residents to identify solutions to long-standing community concerns about the LRT and create a process to secure community benefits from the development of the Central Corridor. Participants joined in the discussion about the future of transit development in the Twin Cities and how they could apply lessons learned from the Central Corridor in their own communities. 2008 Annual ReportThursday, December 17, 2009
The Alliance's 2008 annual report is now available! Organizer Roundtable Resource: Tools from the Rail~Volution ConferenceWednesday, December 9, 2009
A cohort of 36 people from nonprofits and government agencies attended the Rail~Volution Conference in Boston at the end of October. Rail~Volution is a conference for practitioners from all perspectives who believe strongly in the role of land use and transit as equal partners in the quest for greater livability and greater communities. The conference provided a unique opportunity for innovative minds to develop solutions to issues that affect livability in cities, towns and regions of all sizes and shapes. The Alliance held an Organizer Roundtable in November to allow Twin Cities organizers who weren't able to attend the conference to learn from those who did. Even if you didn't attend the roundtable, this Organizer Roundtable Resource willl point you toward helpful links and documents to inform your work. 15 years Organizing Together for JusticeThursday, November 19, 2009
The Alliance is celebrating our 15th anniversary in 2009. Read about our accomplishments in our first 15 years and check out the winning photographs in our in/stability photo competition. Measuring the Racial Impacts of Public PolicyFriday, November 6, 2009
Terry Keleher of the Applied Research Center made this presentation at the Alliance's 2009 Regional Equity Series event on Measuring the Racial Impacts of Public Policies. Roundtable Resource: Lobbying for Policy Decisions with Community AccountabilityWednesday, November 4, 2009
On October 21, 2009, regional organizers came together at the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability to discuss their strategies and experiences in advocating for public policy change while remaining accountable to the communities they represent. Organizer Roundtable Resource: Racial Equity Impact PoliciesTuesday, October 6, 2009
On September 26, 2009. Twin Cities’ activists and organizers joined in discussion on racial equity impact policies. This roundtable centered on the work of a coalition that includes the Alliance, Aurora St. Anthony Neighborhood Development Corporation (ASANDC), Community Stabilization Project (CSP) and Jewish Community Action (JCA), which is working with the St. Paul Planning and Economic Development Department to incorporate racial equity into the development subsidies of the city. The Benefits of Public TransportationWednesday, September 2, 2009
Transportation is the lifeblood of a nation’s economy, moving and connecting people, goods and services. For many Americans, talk of our transportation system may bring to mind our expansive highway system, undoubtedly the largest in the world. But increasingly, studies are showing that Americans want alternatives to driving to their destinations.
Organizer Roundtable: Community Organizing in the SuburbsWednesday, September 2, 2009
On August 26, 2009, Twin Cities organizers came together to discuss specific strategies for community organizing in the Twin Cities suburbs. This resource summarizes the discussion at the roundtable, including tips from our presenters and participants! Organizer Roundtable Resources: Do-It-Yourself MediaWednesday, August 5, 2009
On July 29, 2009, the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability held an Organizer Roundtable that brought together Twin Cities’ organizers to discuss current social media tools and how they can be used to elevate our organizing campaigns. Mary Turck, editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and Bill Toth, Web 2.0 intern for the Headwaters Foundation for Justice, presented at the roundtable. Transportation Stimulus in MinnesotaMonday, June 29, 2009
Did Minnesota use the federal stimulus to create jobs, catch up on needed repair, and expand transportation choices for everyone? This report produced by the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability, Transit for Livable Communities and 1,000 Friends of Minnesota analyzes transportation stimulus spending in Minnesota. Organizer Roundtable Resource: Campaign MessagingTuesday, June 23, 2009
The Alliance’s Organizer Roundtable on June 17, 2009, brought Twin Cities organizers together to discuss campaign messaging and its importance in organizing. This roundtable provided an opportunity for organizers to join in a discussion about messaging practices in organizing campaigns, and to ask questions of regional leaders in organizing communications. The Power of a StoryThursday, May 28, 2009
Earlier this month, the Alliance brought organizers together from around the metropolitan region to learn techniques to make storytelling a more effective part of their organizing strategy. This Organizer Roundtable featured Loren Niemi of the Public Policy Project presenting “The Power of a Story.” Niemi says: With 40 years of organizing and 30 plus years of having identified myself as a storyteller, I understand why Hollywood Producer Peter Guber says in Harvard Business Review “Storytelling ... is one of the most powerful tools for achieving astonishing results. It is action oriented – a force for turning dreams into goals and then into results.” Stories are fundamental to the organizer’s role in helping individuals and communities to identify their dreams, hopes, fears and experience to harness them in service of building identity, common ground and change. The question is not whether stories have a role in your work but how can you be intentional and culturally responsive about the stories you tell. A good story touches the heart, engages the imagination and invites participation in arriving at “happily ever after.” It makes the complex easier to understand by anchoring in our human experience. It gives voice to the lives of those most impacted by issues. It can create powerful metaphors that frame our understanding of challenges and solutions. How do you create powerful advocacy stories? First you listen. Then you tell and retell what you heard to distill the essence of the story. You test it with a variety of audiences. You repeat the process again recognizing that it is the embodiment of what Paul Costello says: “We story our lives into meaning and that meaning shapes our values and actions.” Organizer Roundtable Resource: The Role of Research in Effective Campaign StrategyWednesday, April 22, 2009
The Alliance for Metropolitan Stability held an Organizer Roundtable on April 22, 2009, that brought Twin Cities organizers together to discuss the Role of Research in Effective Campaign Strategy. This roundtable provided an opportunity for organizers to discuss the role research can play in community campaigns, and to ask questions of local research experts. Organizer Roundtable Resource: Education for Liberation - The Paulo Freire MethodologyTuesday, April 7, 2009
The Alliance's recent Organizer Roundtable featured Victor Cole of Twin Cities Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed, who presented on a variety of popular education methods. This document outlines the historical roots of popular education, derived from the teachings of Paulo Freire. Organizer Roundtable Resource: The Importance of Organizing in Community DevelopmentWednesday, March 18, 2009
The Alliance for Metropolitan Stability held an Organizer Roundtable on March 11, 2009, that brought together Twin Cities’ organizers to discuss the Importance of Organizing in Community Development. This roundtable provided an opportunity to discuss the role organizing plays in community development efforts – and to share challenges faced and successful approaches to use when organizing in a community development setting. Organizer Roundtable Resource: The Intersection Between Electoral and Issue OrganizingWednesday, February 18, 2009
The Alliance for Metropolitan Stability held an Organizer Roundtable on February 11, 2009, that brought Twin Cities organizers together to discuss the Intersection of Electoral and Issue Organizing. This roundtable was an opportunity for organizers to share their recent successes in electoral organizing – and to discuss how to capture that energy in future issue-based campaigns. Community Benefits Agreements: Growing a Movement in MinnesotaMonday, January 28, 2008
The Alliance for Metropolitan Stability recently released this report on community benefits agreements to further develop local understanding of the CBA's potential to yield significant, community-desired results from large-scale redevelopments and other projects. More and more organizations and coalitions are turning to the CBA model to produce meaningful — and, perhaps more importantly, enforceable — outcomes for low-income people and communities of color. Recommendations for the Wireless Minneapolis Community Benefits AgreementMonday, March 6, 2006
The Digital Inclusion Coalition was hosted by the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and comprised of organizations and individuals concerned about creating opportunities for low-income people and people of color to gain access to and training on computers and the Internet. The group came together as the city of Minneapolis issued an RFP for a private company to run its citywide Wi-Fi network. The coalition released Recommendations for the Wireless Minneapolis Community Benefits Agreement, which advocated for the city to demand benefits for taxpayers in the vendor contract. Providing solutions to the digital divide, the report shows how to ensure that all are represented when a city offers universal wireless internet service. Many of these recommendations were adopted in the final contract between the city and US Internet, providing more than $11 million for digital inclusion efforts in Minneapolis and many other benefits. |
 Common Ground Spring 2010 (03/31/2010)
The Alliance newsletter "Common Ground" features stories about the connections between people, places and issues in the Twin Cities Region. From securing the three missing light rail stations on Central Corridor, to the Harrison neighborhood's fight against disinvestment, to the benefits of public transportation and the importance of integrating land-use, housing, economic development in our transit planning, to HIRE Minnesota's work for hiring equity - this edition shares how on all of these issues, communities have been coming together to make development more racially, economically, and environmentally just. Read all about it!  Metro Organizer: Equitable Development Updates (02/03/2010) New events, resources and articles this week! Plus, read about the Alliance's own Organizer of the Year -- Alessandra Williams, HIRE Minnesota Coordinator! |
