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Profile: Brian Johns—A Day in the Life of a New Organizer
- Vanderbilt University Press
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13 Profile: Brian Johns A Day in the Life of a New Organizer We asked Brian Johns, a new organizer, to describe a typical day, to give an idea of what life is like for an organizer still learning the ropes. At the time of the inter view, in October, 2003, he was an organizer for the Virginia Organizing Project. He is now Political/Community Organizing Coordinator for the Service Employees International Union District 1199P in Philadelphia. 14 We Make Change I have a great job. I have two main formats for a work day. One is the office day. I’ll come in at 8:30 or 9:00. A lot of the work to set up meetings is done in between the meetings. The meetings are the really fun part, but you might have to call 150 folks to get ten out. A lot of those days are spent just calling people, or doing research. For example, I started working on a Virginia Housing Development Authority campaign. They had a $1.2 billion surplus that wasn’t being put into use helping low-income folks get affordable housing. I would go in and look at VOP’s database or contacts that I knew from different churches just from being in the Richmond area. So I create these lists. I call my office the “Land of Lists” sometimes, because you’ve got all these initial contact lists, and then you’ll take a list of thirty, pare it down to the ten who’ve responded and who agreed to meet. Then once you meet with folks, you have another list of those who are really interested in acting on this. Some days in the office you’re calling people all day—following up and setting up meetings. Another office task might be research. We’re starting a tax reform campaign; I didn’t know a whole lot about Virginia’s tax structure going in at all. So I spent some time recently reading a lot of the information on the tax system we have in the state and on some of the proposals that our statewide strategy team are working on to change that. I’m trying to make sure that I know enough to speak about it. So it’s research, making calls, making lists, and following up from meetings. A huge part of it is follow-up. We had a Dismantling Racism workshop in Petersburg on the ninth, and had about fifteen folks there. I’m calling all those folks and seeing what they thought about it, and really talking to them about some of the issues that were brought up. That’s the same with any meeting. You want to come out of a meeting and sit down and really reflect on what happened. And then strategically think about what’s next. “So we got this done, we got that done. What do we need to do to keep this thing going?” So that’s the office days. Then there are the individual meeting days, which are the traveling days. I’ll try to set up three, four, or five meetings—however many I can on that day—and just go. For example, it can be going to ask for endorsements on the affordable housing campaign or campaigning to restore voting rights for former felons who had served their time in Virginia. You spend a lot of time meeting with folks to get endorsements, and with folks who work with voting rights or in civil rights organizations. Or churches, or different kinds of organizations that might be interested in signing on to work on the campaign. And from those meetings you work out what people are willing to do. Some people say, “Hey, endorsements are a gimme. What else can I do?” Then there are one-to-ones. One-to-ones are a huge part of chapter development. In Petersburg I started in December just talking to folks. I was mainly going into the community, figuring out what people were passionate about and what people wanted to see changed. These conversations can [44.206.227.65] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:25 GMT) Profile: Brian Johns 15 range from forty-five minutes to an hour and a half. It’s just really finding out what people are interested in, and if they’d be interested in working with a group like VOP. Also, we do a lot of planning meetings and trainings. The chapter in...