Final Report: South Florida Jobs with Justice

Weaving the Web of Social Justice
The goals of the SFJwJ regional gathering project were to: 1) connect social justice activists and organizations in Miami-Dade to similar entities in central and northern Florida; 2) solicit the needs and assets of the social justice community in Miami-Dade; and 3) compile, summarize and disseminate the data collected.

History
In May 2004, nearly 20 funders participated in an inaugural visit to Miami as the Florida Infrastructure Funders Group. Various organizational representatives gathered in a series of panels over a three-day period to share existing work and connect numerous efforts across the state. During the sessions participants identified many needs, which were distilled into five immediate categories:

1. Post-election unemployment
2. Statewide communication
3. Policy research capacity
4. Independent media
5. Alternative revenue creation

The conversations of ‘statewide communication’ revolved around the need to uncover and connect social justice work in Florida. A number of foundations contracted with individual consultants to gather this information, but those individual networks proved too small. Additionally, those of us from grassroots movement organizations felt there was a more democratic way to gather this information. Our answer: regional gatherings.

Such gatherings would encourage small, locally-based organizations that might not be part of the statewide patchwork to engage and share their vision for social change. All agreed that a targeted participant list should be developed, but everyone would be welcome, in the hopes of creating a truly democratic summit [hopefully, the beginning of such engagements]. These gatherings would uncover ‘where our edges meet’ and clarify what activists ‘on the ground’ feel is necessary to address the needs listed above.

Making the Regional Gatherings a Reality
SFJwJ encountered more than one bend in the road as we attempted to democratically assemble the regional meetings. Eventually, we refined a process to move each of the gatherings to fruition.

• A paid consultant [Carolyn Thompson and then, Jeanette Smith] handled the logistical planning and outreach for each gathering.
• The statewide Advisory Committee of northern, central and southern volunteers set the agendas for each gathering, convened site committees to assist the logistical consultant and identified potential meeting facilitators.
• Each facilitator [Maria Rodriguez, Tanya Dawkins, Alyce Gowdy Wright] used the same agenda to systematize the solicitation of information and allow future comparisons.
• All participants received the meeting notes and the attendee list for their gathering.

Who we are
Before the gatherings, about one-third of participants filled out surveys to describe their organizations and organizational interests. Half of the respondents were part of organizations that were founded after 1999, making many of the Florida organizations younger than eight years old. Also, 70% of participants at the gathering were not compensated activists, but volunteers in leadership positions.

When surveyed on their interest areas, 63% of respondents said economic justice was a priority for their organization. This issue was the most compelling for the most organizations. Therefore, economic justice should be considered as a frame for joint work, since many respondents also included comments that they would like to work more closely with diverse organizations.

After economic justice, the war (39%), energy conservation (32%), free speech (41%), and the death penalty (32%) were the next most unified compelling issue areas.

The least compelling issue areas were international affairs (17%) and international trade issues (15%), begging the question about how connected Florida activists are to the global movement for social justice. While stopping the war in Iraq was important to respondents, few respondents prioritized the root causes of international conflict.

When respondents wrote about their organizational needs, many prioritized more staff, and therefore. more funding. They also desired more connections with other organizations and outside support, be it trainers or mentors to help foster fresh ideas and communication strategies.

These interests and needs, which were identified pre-gathering, set the stage for deep conversations and expanding our visions beyond organizational needs.

Democracy with a ‘d’

A total of three gatherings were held. The first was Saturday, August 5, 2006, in Orlando at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Orlando. Forty-two attendees participated. The second gathering was Saturday, November 11, 2006, in Jacksonville at the Talk of the Town meeting hall. Thirty-two participants attended. The third and final gathering was Saturday, January 6, 2007, at the St. Maurice Catholic Church in Fort Lauderdale. Thirty-six attendees participated.

There are some participation trends that are worth noting.
• Most attendees had one ore more organizational affiliation
• A significant number of activists were heavily involved in development work.
• People had a hard time with big picture visioning, particularly when grouped as one region. Thankfully participants weren’t stuck on their single issues, they were clear on the larger purpose of the gathering, even if the conversation itself was hard for them to engage in.
• The trends uncovered during the meetings drove home the fact that a lot of the political problems in Florida are at the regional level, in terms of policy creation and its impacts on our constituencies.
• Part of the agenda included an exercise to name one negative trend and one positive trend in each region. Negative trends were more issue-specific, but most saw the solutions, the process for change, as somehow connected to civic participation/engagement. Positive trends centered on a hopeful sense that the public is more receptive to alternative to current injustices. This was a consistent theme in all the gatherings. Most importantly, every gathering discussed a sense of impending change, an upcoming ‘moment in time.’

Regional Realities
One of the most telling segments of the agenda was when participants shared what they were experiencing as positive trends and negative trends regionally.

Central Florida
Central Florida had much to celebrate, but was realistic, about the current challenges. The activists generally believed that the public was becoming more engaged in civic activity through more education and funding, and greater engagement in the political arena. Central Florida activists seemed to share a common focus on government and policy as a source of their negative trends, even when the issues were diverse. They focused on the privatization of prisons, legal restrictions for voters and bans on feeding homeless and a general erosion in democracy.

North Florida
The activists in North Florida had a larger sense of a growing grassroots movement than the South or Central Florida activists. They believe their base is growing, with an increased resistance to sprawl, more responsiveness to homelessness, and more progressive school boards. They mentioned improved race relations, increased cultural, spiritual and moral capital and increased community and environmental stewardship.

The North Florida activists were the only group of activists that focused racism and segregation as being key negative trends. However, they are also the only gathering of activists that did not highlight immigrant rights as a positive or negative issue.

They also focused on religion more than the other gatherings, mentioning “creationism” and the progressive’s inability to truly engage the religious community. They connected with “common trends” in other “Southern areas”, such as worker abuse, aligning themselves with the South, in a way unexpressed at the Central or South gatherings.

South Florida
South Florida’s reflections on the current positives were short and vague. The group stayed away from listing their own victories and gains. While Central and North Florida listed increases in awareness of progressive issues and the environment, an increase in a grassroots funding base, and increased cultural capital, South Florida activists were quiet on all of these fronts. The sense of isolation in South Florida is amplified by the negatives they discussed, which were much broader and more encompassing than their positives. The list of negatives does not seem focused on a singular “enemy,” but is more focused on a general state of negativity from the “rise of fascism” to uninformed workers and unfair drug policies.

The Southern gathering was also the only gathering that failed to mention LGBT issues at all. Not only were there no activists working on LGBT issues in the room, there was no sense of any regional accomplishment or connection to that sector of work.

Priorities
After contextualizing current realities, the participants worked to envision what the movement for social justice in their region most needs to build momentum. One of the most pressing questions for the gatherings was what would it take for Florida organizations to go from being small individualized groups to a cohesive movement with clout. Each region defined what they would need to further movement building in their area.

Central Florida
The Central Florida activists stated that creating strong connections with each other in their communities is their top priority for creating change. They emphasized that many of the political problems they encountered could be addressed with local policy creation and political involvement. Specifically, in Tampa Bay, supporting the local progressive party, cultural integration, and better community programs were identified as priorities.. In Volusia County/Brevard/Flager, activists would like to unite the agricultural and suburban communities to work for sustainable development and protect the environment. In Orlando, the main priority was cultural and physical integration of neighborhoods and fighting sprawl.

North Florida
The North gathering prioritized economic and development parity at their local level. The broadness of their priorities represents their their goal of linking a diversity of political work and engagement.

The attendees also prioritized the creation of a volunteer or staffed resource structure and network, and information sharing as top priorities for work in their region. Because activists and organizations are fairly stretched out across their region and in the state, point people who were committed to regional engagement is necessary. The attendees were particularly interested in low-tech ways of staying connected with each other, such as more organized phone banking and direct mailings.

South Florida
South Florida activists prioritized the creation of spaces to discuss and develop shared analysis. Help from outside of the region on issues such as creating joint theories of change, strategizing and plan implementation would help meet this goal. They were focused on creating connections with the global justice movement and understanding how race, sex and class function in movement building.

They are also interested in an increased focus on movement building, as well as organizational development. They prioritized working more collectively as a region. This extended to all aspects of their work, from shared financial resources to even sharing the same spaces, in order to learn from each other. They discussed connecting their staffs, media, political education and web-based connections.

Statewide Recommendations

The top recommendation stemming from all three gatherings is that activists across Florida must work to develop more statewide, regional, local and virtual safe spaces for ideological development and resource gathering and sharing.

• Social justice gatherings. Regular meeting spaces to grow our philosophies of change, understand our histories, share analysis, struggle with each other and define ourselves as a movement.
• Progressive Florida think tanks. Spaces to frame Florida-focused progressive issues to develop and research public opinion and messaging work
• Volunteer resource people. Representatives across the state who are willing to be links in regions and inter-region, to keep information shared and disseminated.
• Virtual Connections. Developing high-tech connections through Florida PIN listservs and e-blasts would help to fill in the vital gaps in the statewide network.

Not surprisingly, fundraising and member training were discussed, because they are always common needs in social justice movement building. Yet the vast majority of follow up recommendations did not address those needs. Perhaps this is because just as one participant would state that need, another group would offer to do the training! We are the ones we have been waiting for.

A Work in Progress
All the data reflected in this report capture a moment in time, a slice of movement history. But the recommendations are surprisingly consistent. Given the length of time it took SFJwJ to democratically organize the gatherings—a year and a half in all—any consistency among participants must be taken seriously. The final two products in this project rely upon volunteer partner FLPIN—this includes graphic representation of all attendees and a directory of social justice organizations across the state. The directory is available electronically at www.flpin.net.

Finally, there are two social justice entities that the regional gatherings can take some credit for promoting: the Miami Community Benefits Coalition, a grouping of a dozen social justice organizations dedicated to harnessing area development for the uplift of our members; and the incredible delegation of activists from Miami-Dade County that attended the United States Social Forum.

The regional gatherings were the first convening of area activists for broader conversations about social change. Hence the gatherings prepared people for participation in similar conversations at the national level, e.g. the Social Forum. Likewise, the South Florida gathering was an opportunity for area organizations to contemplate potential collaborations, of which the Community Benefits Coalition is a prime example. In all, these humble regional gatherings were a strengthening of social justice fabric in South Florida and statewide.

The Potential The first-ever regional social justice gatherings were incredibly successful in reaching the goals set out by funders and grassroots organizers. Participants were hungry for conversations about how to become more deeply imbedded in a movement for social justice. At all the gatherings, participants wanted structured spaces to become better connected to people doing similar and different work in their region. With such a high level of engagement and more local, regional and statewide gatherings being named a priority from the first round of gatherings, it seems likely this trend will continue.

There are ways to make the gatherings even bigger, connecting even more diverse organizations and activists. FLIPIN was able to identify identified 465 groups working on social justice issues in Florida. Many of the groups are clustered in major cities, with Tampa being the most active. FLPIN reports there could be up to 2,500 groups across the state working in some area of social justice, most of whom are disconnected from a broader regional network. Beyond that, there could be easily 500,000 progressives in Florida. Future social justice gatherings will become more powerful litmus tests of the political climate as the attendance includes a broader array of groups from every county of the state.

 

Copyright © 2007 | South Florida Jobs with Justice | Contact Us | Site Map