Upcoming Training Opportunity

IPL and OTOC will host a 3-Day Organizing Training in October for an intensive weekend led by organizers from around the country.

Join us October 17-19 (Thursday evening through Saturday afternoon) at First United Methodist Church (7020 Cass St.)

Thursday 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM; Friday 9 AM – 7 PM; Saturday 9 AM – 12 PM

  • Do you want to learn effective organizing practices in order to create change in our local community?
  • Do you want to meet others who are committed to developing relationships across lines, such as race and religious denomination, that too often divide us?
  • Does your congregation or organization want to learn proven steps to develop leaders and enliven your entire congregation or organization?

If your answer is “Yes” to any of these questions, come to learn from experienced organizers from across the network of OTOC’s sister organizations.

Registration Fee-$50 (includes Friday lunch & dinner).

Please make checks to the Institute for Public Leadership and send to 3647 Lafayette Ave. Omaha, NE 68131

For scholarship information, contact Cheri Cody at [email protected]

Private and Public Relationships

The Summer Training Series closed on Monday, August 12 with IAF Regional Organizer Paul Turner leading a session on Public and Private Relationships to over 60 leaders. Private relationships are those with people like family and friends, the people you are authentic, relaxed, and comfortable with. Public relations are with who we encounter in our work, civic life, and churches. These public relationships are treated differently than private relationships- they are about getting things done, having tension and accountability, and performing the required role. For an moving example of a private relationship, read This Eulogy for a New York City Fire Captain who was killed in the World Trade Center. The idea of camaraderie is explored as different than friendship, requiring trust, accountability, and demanding better of each other of the well being of the whole and the greater community.

This idea of public relationships can define the role of our congregations. Church can most certainly lead to valuable private relationships with each other and with Higher Being we are there for, but as a public space, the church should also be a space of justice, action, and tension. We can hold each other to be better, do more, proclaim a more powerful message.

What is Broad Based Organizing?

On Monday, July 8th Paul Turner, an Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) community organizer, kicked off the first training session from the series Reflecting on Democracy: Why People of Faith Matter. Turner first explained IAF’s unique history. IAF is a network of local faith and community-based organizations, and OTOC is one of those organizations!

In the 1930’s, Saul Alinsky, a social entrepreneur and community organizer, formed the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, which gathered people together to discuss, organize, and accommodate to the rising needs for the Chicago area during the Great Depression. Together these people were able to attain a level of power to make changes. In 1972, Alinsky used this model to create the Industrial Areas Foundation and helped formally train people as community organizers. After Alinsky’s leadership, other organizers such as Ernesto Cortez emphasized relational power as a prominent strategy for community organizing. Here, relational power is defined as power among and between. This is different than the common idea that power is tyrannical and oppressive. Power with each other gives a voice to ordinary people to have a seat at the table on decisions that affect them.

Turner then connected the rich IAF history to the effectiveness of broad based organizing, by comparing it to the strategies of movements. Movements consist of individual members that all act for a specific cause or issue. Broad-based organizing, however, consists of institutions and focus on relational power to collectively organize people and money. Although broad-based organizations such as OTOC have action teams that focus on issues, the issues themselves are a means to an end, not specifically the end. Broad-based organizations are built on the relationships, not the issue, which makes the sustained impact more powerful, and the organization has a louder voice to use on important issues.

Our 3-day training will be October 17-19.