Justice network celebrates 20 years of organizing work

by Ben MacConnell

The Direct Action & Research Training (DART) Center, a national network of local faith-based community organizing groups, has reason to celebrate. Last month, they passed a milestone: 20 years of fighting for justice and building community. Founded by Holly Holcombe and John Calkins during a small organizing effort in Miami, Fla., the DART Center has developed 20 metropolitan affiliates spread throughout six states.

"Injustice takes many forms in our nation’s cities," reflects Calkins, who is now DART’s executive director. "When we take a close look we see healthcare for the few, inequitable education within our public schools, lack of affordable housing, absence of living-wage jobs, police misconduct, unfair treatment of new immigrants and countless others. These things rightfully make us angry. However, simply getting angry when facing injustice doesn’t mean things will change. I have learned that we need to hold accountable the systems that make important decisions affecting our lives."

Over the last two years alone, local DART organizations have won victories on a broad set of issues including reform of public-school suspension policies, job source agreements, expansion of community-oriented policing, improved support for job training for those coming off public assistance and fair immigration policies.

Calkins attributes DART’s success, in part, to its principle of self-determination and leadership within the community. Each DART affiliate is a coalition of local congregations and neighborhood groups committed to building a powerful, diverse, broad-based, multi-issued and democratically run organization devoted to economic and social justice. While each affiliate will have a professional staff of organizers, it’s the unpaid leaders from the local community that make the decisions and ultimately run the organization. They are responsible for surfacing and researching issues, developing campaigns, making organization-wide decisions through their board of directors, and speaking and acting in the public arena. DART organizers provide the facilitation, training and leadership development needed to make it happen.

Another key to DART’s success has been their ability to mobilize people through intentional relationship building processes. Cristina Fundora, DART’s Immigrant Organizing Director, lays out DART’s approach. "The theory is simple – injustice exists and without power we don’t stand a chance of changing it. Our power comes from organizing people. Those of us in low- to moderate-income communities do not have to be powerless to change things. We need to get connected. Conducting intentional relationship building allows us to do this."

Finally, DART relies heavily on the "faith-based" part of faith-based community organizing. "A shift in power is happening across the country for those who have been traditionally excluded from the democratic process," says John Aeschbury, a clergy person who is the lead organizer for DART’s affiliate in Columbus, Ohio. "It’s happening in the basements of churches, synagogues and mosques because we find common values for justice, fairness and equality." DART’s network now includes over 400 local congregations (Christian, Muslim and Jewish).

For more information: http://www.dartcenter.org/