It Starts With Faith: Organizing School for Teams is a 9-week faith organizing training series designed to build faith-rooted organizing teams that are committed to dismantling white supremacy and taking action in with Side With Love's four intersectionality justice priorities (Climate Justice, LGBTQ+ & Gender Justice, Democracy & Voting Rights, Decriminalization). It is open to people of all experience levels and faith affiliation.

Participants will learn foundational organizing skills to build and support teams in racial justice rooted work and take part in the upcoming Side With Love Action Center-a distributed organizing and leadership development program launching this fall.

Organizing School will support 20-30 teams with the goal of aligning all of our faith organizing to build power and impact in 2022. The teams will have access to organizing coaches and be invited to participate in national leadership roles in our upcoming Side With Love Action Center.

  • Session 0: Orientation

  • Session 1: Faithful Social Justice: Telling your story

    • Video

    • Slides

    • Homework for Session 2: Work on your story until you’re happy with it. Ask to meet with someone else from your team, congregation or community. Listen to their story, share your story, invite them to join you in watching the Action Center launch on Sunday.

  • Session 2: Finding Your Role: Building power in faith organizing

    • Video

    • Slides

    • Centering: queer morning blessings/birkot hashachar | written/translated by Dori Midnight and Randy Furash-Stewart

    • Video: N'Tanya Lee, “Grassroots Organizing Builds Power” (shown 0:00 - 1:54)

    • Homework for Session 3: Community Mapping Exercise. Your task: Create a community map using words, images, graphics. Creating a Community Map will help define and shape a clear picture of what assets, challenges and visions you have for your community. You will be mapping your specific geographical area: city, town, area or community, focusing on the thing you are trying to shift.

  • Session 3: Building Organizing Infrastructure: Leadership Development and Identification

  • Session 4: Facing Conflict: Covenant & Transformation

  • Session 5: Building for a liberated future: Campaigns and program design

  • Session 6: Partnerships in a pandemic and recovery

    • Video

    • Slides

    • Homework/Exercises

      • Building on Step 1 (Internal Assessment) and Step 2 (Mapping Local Ecosystem)

      • Step 3: Reflect together as a team about what you learned and how this applies in your context; and prepare, schedule, and/or conduct a 1-1 with the partner(s) you want to build with

    • Summary of the Tips & Reminders shared out:

      • Understand how partners communicate, are organized

      • Have internal clarity and openness to new possibilities

      • Surface assumptions, i.e. on self-interest, visibility, duration, speed/pace, and opportunities to show up in a particular way

      • Be mindful about bringing a preconceived structure in mind, before clarity and agreement on partnering

      • Actively build consensus within your larger congregation/org regarding the your partnership

      • Reflect on the shape of what the congregation wants and what the community needs - and be prepared to change

  • Session 7: Growing your impact: Tools for evaluation and growth

    • Homework: Review the reflection questions and ask your team. Questions can be found on Slides 21-24.

      • What do we need to be able to answer ?

      • What tools will we use to find them? 

  • Session 8: Meet the Moment: Tactics for Mobilizing Supporters and Contesting Power

    • Video

    • Slides

    • Homework: Do two one on ones! One with a team member, another with someone who is not yet involved in your (possibly developing) justice work.

      • Remember, the purposes of 1 on 1s are:

        • Building a public, working relationship, not a private friendship:

        • Finding what motivates someone

        • Spending a lot of time listening

        • Discovering what the person is concerned about

        • Learning about our supporter’s networks, and what they’re involved in

        • Identifying what they are upset or concerned about

    • Resource:

    • Summary of the tips and tools shared out:

      • We exist in an ecosystem that drives change, not in our own bubbles

      • We must mobilize supporters to create capacity and build power to effect change

      • The ecosystem of change has many components, such as institutions, the arts, technology, and media. These sectors are driven by people we can reach and connect with.

      • Among the many tools (see slide 14) we can use to organize, one of the most effective with individuals is the one on one

      • One on ones is a tool for building organizing work relationships. We can set clear boundaries in how we navigate relationships in the justice ecosystem.

    • Music:

  • Session 9: Final Session

Stay Connected

We all have gifts, ideas, skills, and resources to share. We all have challenges, lessons, and stories from which we can all learn and grow. Let’s keep the sharing going. Join your cohort, other “It Starts With Faith: Organizing School for Teams 2021” participants and facilitators on our Side With Love Slack channel. Once you log in, find the #Org-School-2021 channel.