Jess Alexander, Community Voices Get Heard
Everybody has something to say about what’s wrong and how everything is messed up. But most of the time we don’t get heard — we just complain, and nobody listens. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can make sure our complaints and concerns get heard and begin to get results by taking action as an organized group. I did it Monday (read about it here), and I did it again bigger and better on Tuesday.
Almost 300 people, from all different walks of life marched on Wells Fargo Tuesday to demand they respond to the concerns we delivered the day before. Members of TakeAction and Minnesotans For a Fair Economy joined with others from the spontaneous ‘Occupy Minnesota’ movement, and filled the same Wells Fargo lobby in downtown Minneapolis that we went to Monday. (Think they heard us this time?)
But the economy is busted, and it’s going to take more than a march to fix it. So that afternoon, I joined with dozens of members of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC), to ask the Minneapolis School Board to quit doing business with Wells Fargo. Home foreclosures have a devastating affect on the School District and make racial disparities in education even worse. And guess who is doing the foreclosing?
Over 100 NOC and MFE members attended the school board meeting. The School Board was forced to hear us out and consider NOC’s demand: stop banking with Wells Fargo. Another success for communities coming together to make their voice heard.
But wait, there’s more. Like I said, we ALL have complaints, and Tuesday was a busy day for communities speaking up in an effective way.
My last stop was a massive community meeting in Saint Paul fighting the major foreclosure problem and the harm they do to poor neighborhoods and communities-of-color the most.
Tuesday night, ISAIAH held a community meeting with over 400 people at the St. James A.M.E. Church in Saint Paul. Six of the seven city council members were asked to come and make a public commitment to fix the foreclosure problem.
It was amazing. The majority of the city council was there, in front of a sanctuary filled to overflowing, being held to account by the very communities they serve. Each council member was specifically asked if they would commit to doing the right thing on four recommendations presented to them by ISAIAH. In that packed room, with the community bearing down on them, all six agreed to add their names to a letter asking banks to comply with practices that prevent foreclosures. I have not seen such a clear example of community power very many times in my life.
In three different ways today, I saw and was able to participate in communities organizing together to make our voices heard. An organized community is a community that gets heard. And a community that gets heard is a powerful community.
Jess Alexander
Jess Alexander is a leader in TakeAction’s work to organize a new economy.
