Story URL: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=109585
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Community organization teaches women how to take control through activism
by Daniel Lambert
Dec 09, 2008
Daniel Lambert/MEDILL
Community organizers lead women in cheers as part of a town-hall meeting on education reform.
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COFI's Web siteThe town hall meeting on Chicago’s West Side drew about 45 women on Saturday morning looking for ways to improve education for their children. Community Organizing and Family Issues hosted the meeting as part of its campaign on early education.
“It is what we call organizing around the issues that are important to families, and having them be a spokesperson for those issues,” said Tracy Occomy Crowder, an organizer with the group.
Getting community members to participate in these efforts and help themselves is key to COFI’s work. To make participation easy for mothers on Saturday, the group served breakfast before the meeting, then provided care for the kids so the mothers could talk about their issues.
Attending town-hall meetings is just the first step, however. COFI also teaches low-income minority women how to be community organizers themselves so they can work on issues that affect them on a personal level.
The next phase is based on more traditional community organizing activities. It is here that program participants learn the basics of community organization by talking to their neighbors about community issues, learning how to approach politicians, all focused on the trainees’ own communities.
In the third phase, also known as POWER-PAC, the trainees work on an actual community campaign on a specific issue affecting low-income families, Crowder said.
“I think that a lot of times [officials] just think for [community members] and assume they know the best way to solve a problem instead of people who are impacted,” Crowder said. “And that is kind of where we come in.
"We are working with the moms and grandmoms and getting them at the table to have their voices heard, and getting them at the table and getting them to feel that they are an expert about the things going on in their life.”
“I was always pretty active and aware,” Morton said. “But my work with COFI just increased my desire to get involved with these issues.”
