Empowering Caregivers: SEIU 2015’s Distributed Leadership Project Success
Wild team members Jake Waxman and Nneka Akubeze, along with colleagues from the Workplace Justice Lab, recently wrapped up the second year of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 2015 Distributed Leadership Project (DLP). This ongoing partnership with SEIU 2015 focuses on adapting an organizing framework that empowers staff and members to step into leadership roles and transition from mobilizing to organizing. This is critically important for a union that represents over 500,000 nursing home and homecare workers throughout the state of California relying on motivated efforts from members to expand reach. While this organizing approach, based on relationships and [...]
Freedom, Inc. Launches ‘Invest/Divest’ Campaign
Freedom, Inc. (FI), based in Madison, WI, is a Black and Southeast Asian non-profit serving low- to no-income communities of color. Their mission is to achieve social justice by providing direct services, leadership development, and community organizing to end violence against women, gender-non-conforming and transgender individuals, and children in these communities. FI continues to confront the systems that directly impact the communities they support, with the biggest challenge being the threat of police violence and intentional targeting of communities of color, especially Black community members. Militarization and criminalization are crucial in advancing and protecting economic neoliberal-capitalist interests. There has [...]
Sandi Rohde: Organizer Spotlight
This week's organizer spotlight features Sandi Rohde from Appleton, WI: 1) What are you working on now—the change you are feeling the most urgency around making in the world through your organizing? We just started an active chapter of NOW (National Organization for Women) in the Appleton Area. Only active chapter in the state that we are being told including no state level chapter active at this time. 2) If you could give a new organizer one piece of guidance, what would it be? It's a marathon not a sprint. Take your breaks when you need it so you can be fully [...]
Labor Rising on the West Coast
Experimenting with what it looks like to develop deeper organizing capacity across a large (200k+ member) California labor union, on May 6th -9th, Jake Waxman coordinated a training team with Nneka Akubeze, Dan Grandone, and others from across the country to train 42 SEIU 2015 staff. The goal? Building power to achieve dignity for both workers and patients in long term care. The next stage of this journey is for these staff to recruit 125-150 member leaders from across the state to return in July for a training to launch district leadership teams capable of impacting this year’s elections to [...]
Inaugural Justice Next Cohort
Former Wild Alum and Senior Director of Organizing for Dream.Org, Sean Wilson, recently invited the Wild team into a pilot project partnering with the National Basketball Association to launch the first Justice Next Cohort of 18-24 year old system impacted youth in Sacramento, California. The program aims to empower young adults to emerge as influential leaders within their communities concentrating on areas such as criminal justice reform, workforce development, and climate equity. Over 5-days in April we trained the facilitation team and then the cohort of 20 youth leaders who will be coached over the coming months as they [...]
Reflections From Kortni Malone: LCN/ActionAid International Workshop in Arusha, Tanzania
I had the distinct honor of joining the Leading Change Network, in partnership with ActionAid International in leading a workshop, alongside two incredible Black woman trainers from Sweden and the UK and an incredible director of training and development at our host site MS TCDC, in Arusha, Tanzania. Together, we trained 15 ActionAid Country Directors and support staff from 15 different countries, ranging from across the continent of Africa to Haiti, Spain, Nepal, Myanmar, and Palestine. The workshop was titled “Leading Self, Leading Others, and Leading Organization”, a unique blend of Public Narrative and foundational practices in building relationships [...]
special thanks to our funders
special thanks to our funders
special thanks to our funders
