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May 19, 2005

Yawu Miller

After a year of exchanging information, methodologies and community-based wisdom, a group of organizers of color say they have learned much from each other.

Now as the program that brought them together — the Organizers of Color Initiative — prepares to go into its second year, the organizers say they’re ready for more.

“We know that collectively we have a lot of power,” said Horace Small, executive director of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods, which co-sponsored the initiative with the Center for the Support of Immigrant Organizers. “We can work together to unite our communities.”

The program was aimed at building the skills of organizers and fostering greater collaboration between organizers in different communities. More than 70 organizers took part in the monthly meetings, according to Small.

Funded by the Hyams Foundation, the initiative relied on the organizers themselves to share knowledge and skills, rather than bringing in outside trainers. Organizers who came to a meeting of the initiative last week said they gained much from their monthly meetings.

“The big thing that came out of this was a lot of intercultural conversation,” said Darryl Morrison, a volunteer with Technology for Social Change, a Roxbury-based organization providing assistance to nonprofits.

“We found out that as organizations, we are pretty territorial. Except for people who work on broader issues, people don’t get out of their neighborhoods.”

The conversations between organizers from different parts of the city touched on issues of race and culture. Black organizers were able to discuss issues with immigrant organizers. The conversations were not always easy, according to Gabriel Camacho, an organizer with the American Friends Service Committee.

“There were a lot of interesting conversations between people who would ordinarily not sit in the same room,” Camacho said. “There were a lot of interesting comments like, ‘I wish we were like the black community because they get everything they want.’ I think that was very telling.”

Camacho said activists in different communities have historically been pitted against each other while fighting for limited resources.

“People of color and immigrants are relegated to the bottom rungs of society,” he said. “There’s an artificial sense of competition between them that doesn’t serve the interests of either community.”

The frank discussions were necessary to foster closer working relationships between organizers from different communities, according to Marcia Shannon, an organizer with the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston.

“We had to put it on the table to break the barriers down,” she said.

Progress on relations between the black community and immigrant communities was visible last month when the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition held a meeting at the Freedom House to rally support for immigrants. That meeting was well attended by young, African American activists, according to Small.

A more concrete outgrowth of the initiative is the Organizers of Color Collective — a series of informal meetings held by participants in the Organizers of Color Initiative. The collective, which has no funding or organizational structure, exists simply as a forum for organizers from across the city to exchange ideas.

“After a series of discussions last year, we decided that the Organizers of Color Initiative wouldn’t make sense unless we work together, unless we build on the relationships we’ve started,” Camacho said. “There’s not real structure or bylaws — just the political will to work together. But that’s what’s important. That’s the foundation.”

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