Hello from Central Indiana,
For the past few weeks I have been attending many churches to have clergy leaders aware of the Central Indiana Worker Center. Sometimes though when doing real grassroots organizing it needs to be at the grassroots level.
A couple of weeks ago I attended the Hispanic Leadership Committee at the local Catholic Church to announce the presence of the worker center and that we need their assistance to increase its visibility. A women after the meeting said she was interested in helping out. Prior to living in Logansport she has lived in Salinas, Ca. for 20 years and was active with organizing efforts of Cesear Chavez and the UFW.
After talking with her we went out leaf-letting flyers into the neighborhood. She brought her son along to help and we dropped by one of her friends house that worked at a meatpacking company who told us situations she exprienced with the corporate doctor how their medical "expertise" would be for the workers to tell them on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is the pain. Their remedy would be to take two tylenols, rest for 50 minutes and go back to work.
This Saturday she is organizing a house party to get some members in the community to talk about their work experiences. Having the setting be at a communal house will provide for a more relaxed setting. We quickly made her a board member to the new worker center. The clergy in the area are supportive of the center but are not familiar with the concepts of advocacy in the tactics a community organization or a union would implement building worker value and dignity.
Hope everyone is enjoying their worksites and I will let you know about the house party.
Peace,
Ken
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I like Ken's post on how grassroots is the way to go. I went to meet with workers on Saturday morning for their monthly gathering around the issues they face in the service industry, and it opened a door to go to mass with one of the workers at his Catholic Church in Palo Alto. My secret agenda is to do some outreach to his pastor and see if the worker might be able to speak from the pulpit about the conditions he's facing in the workplace as part of Labor in the Pulpits.
Little by little, more connections are coming together.
Yesterday, Steven, Drew, Becky and myself had a conference call to discuss the different opportunities and challenges of organizing clergy to be involved with the Service Workers Rising campaign in our respective cities (Bay Area, Chicago and NYC). It was encouraging to remember that there are other people trying to move similar people in other parts of the country - it definitely help to bring me out of some of the isolation I've been feeling in this work! Tomorrow, I'm taking a couple of the other interns with me to drop in on some Catholic parishes that have received some information about the Code of Conduct, but haven't signed an endorsement yet. Hopefully, little by little, we can continue to piece this together.
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