Democracy Summer 6th Session

written by Bryan Troupe

Democracy Summer Session 6, hosted by Catalyst Miami, was very edifying and enlightening. There was a panel discussion which was facilitated by Catalyst Miami CEO, Daniella Levine.  The panel members were: Mario Artecona, CEO of Habitat for Humanity; Paul Hunt, Board Member of the March of Dimes Foundation; and Julia Dawson, Board Member of the Civil Liberties Union.

One of the questions posed by Daniella Levine to Mario Artecona was, “What would you recommend to nonprofit leaders in order to engage their board and advocacy directly; or to get their support for their staff to do advocacy?”

Mario’s response was that staff does not participate in board meetings enough, and should participate more. Staff members need to tell board members what it is that they need. Board members also need to know up front exactly what is expected of them and be provided a clear mission.

Paul Hunt was asked by Daniella, “What is the biggest challenge in promoting advocacy in your staff?”

Paul’s answer was one of the challenges “is having a clear agenda and one that is staff-oriented.”  Mr. Hunt also stated that staff needs to build a relationship with policymakers, which helps the staff to better advocate their position.

Daniella introduced Julia Dawson as “an icon of women’s rights.”  One of the points that Julia made during the panel discussion was that it is important for board members to know that they should help constituents, and important to find board members that are actually interested in the organization.

Wendy Wilson, Project Attorney for Dade Legal Aid, said this: “I really liked the panel discussion on board development because it emphasized the necessity for having specific goals for board members…”

The goal of Democracy Summer is to build strong social justice analysis, skills and strategy into the nonprofit sector of Miami-Dade County.

There are two more fantastic sessions to go! Session 7 of Democracy Summer will be held next Thursday, August 18.

Democracy Summer Session 5

by Bryan Troupe

Democracy Summer Session 5 hosted by Catalyst Miami started with a hilarious and illuminative “public stoning” exercise between all of the members. The exercise was headed by Lori Deus, Community Engagement Coordinator for Catalyst Miami, and Gretchen Beesing, VP of Communications for Catalyst Miami.

The members of Democracy Summer were split into three groups for the first presentation, “It’s Raining Rocks.” The first group was labeled the extremely rich, the second group was the Servicers, and the third group was the Villagers. The group labeled the extremely rich had the “idea” to build a casino, but wanted to build on the same land that the Villagers lived on. The concept of the exercise was to create dialogue or find a way for all three parties to be satisfied. The end result was a chaotic scene of groups not being able to correlate with each other, much less with the other groups. The extremely rich threw balls of paper, “rocks”, at the Villagers to chase them away, which was the hilarious part of the exercise. 

 

LaRhonda Odom, Policy Director of Catalyst Miami, gave the second presentation which entailed members of the Democracy Summer event to consider ways of campaign planning. Members proposed ways of how they would go about organizing and reacting to the current issue of CBO funding being cut by local officials in Miami Dade County. This was a great exercise as it brought together knowledgeable individuals with experience to discuss viable ways to protest or build dialogue with local officials. This definitely showed the importance of communication and cohesion between nonprofit organizations. 

Susan Rubio Rivera, founder of the organization M.U.J.E.R., expresses her feelings about the Democracy Summer session:

The goal of Democracy Summer is to build strong social justice analysis, skills and strategy into the nonprofit sector of Miami-Dade County.

Democracy Summer 4th Session

 by Bryan Troupe

So, just how good was session 4 of Democracy Summer?

Participants have consistently given each session high marks, and Susan Rubio Rivera, Executive Director of M.U.J.E.R., summed up Thursday’s experience saying that the 4^th session was the best one to date!

Session 4 of Democracy Summer, hosted by Catalyst Miami, was full of activities in which everyone present interacted with one another.   

Gretchen Beesing, VP of Communications at Catalyst Miami, led an interesting presentation which involved the audience discussing the meaning of three words: activism, advocacy, and service. Attendees were asked to write one word that came to mind when thinking of each word. (For example, for the word “advocacy” one person wrote the word “hippie” next to it.)  One of the positive outcomes of this exercise was its ability to show the many different ways that different individuals can perceive the same three words: activism, advocacy, and service.

This session was really special for me because I was given the opportunity as an intern to facilitate a fantastic panel discussion that took place. The four panelists were:

·         Linda Carmona-Sanchez of Alliance for Early Care and Education

·         Ana Obregon of M.U.J.E.R.

·         Juan Rodriguez of Florida Immigrant Coalition

·         Anjali Sardeshmukh of Mobile Midwives

Linda Carmona-Sanchez spoke first, referring to a trip that her organization took to the State Capitol in Tallahassee. She said that this was many of the organizers first time ever being to the State Capitol. “They were able to see that their Congress people were actually human; they talk, breathe, and sleep just like us.”

Ana Obregon was the second speaker. She spoke about her experiences with the organization M.U.J.E.R. and what the organization was able to do for individuals in the community. One of the great points she made was that M.U.J.E.R. “empowers women to bring co-partners to be part of change.”

Juan Rodriguez presented next, and showed a touching video that left hardly a dry eye in the room. Juan spoke of his experiences of family members being deported and the long road to his gaining citizenship. The video that Juan presented put actual faces on the issue of immigration.

Anjali Sardeshmukh gave an eye-opening presentation about birth justice. Her organization, Mobile Midwives, was able to prevent Jackson Hospital South from being shut down. One of the interesting facts that Anjali gave was that Black babies are twice as likely to die in infancy than white babies, which is why her organization believes so strongly in providing midwives to these disadvantaged neighborhoods.

After such a strong Democracy Summer Session 4, Session 5 promises to be even more outstanding!

Democracy Summer is a program whose goal is to build strong social justice analysis, skills and strategy into the nonprofit sector of Miami-Dade County. We will do this by strengthening the role of nonprofit service organizations as sites of movement building, organizing and mobilization for progressive social change.

Here are some of the websites of attending organizations:

M.U.J.E.R. = www.mujerfla.org

Alliance for Early Care and Education = http://www.myaece.org

Florida Immigrant Coalition = http://floridaimmigrant.org

Mobile Midwives = http://www.mobilemidwife.org

                                 http://birthjustice.blogspot.com

Democracy Summer 3rd Session

by Bryan Troupe

As promised, the 3rd session of Catalyst Miami’s Democracy Summer session delivered a wealth of ideas to all in attendance. Participants were broken into smaller groups of three, which enabled each individual’s separate ideas to be molded into one voice before being presented to the entire group.

Gretchen Beesing conducted the first section, Concepts for Social Change. She presented five methods of social change: direct service, self-help, education, advocacy and direct action organizing.

The second presenter, Caitlin Maclaren, did a fantastic job explaining the Pennywise Campaign. An interesting point that Caitlin made was that local officials should not make cuts that could be damaging in the long term for the community.

Here are sample quotes from those who attended:

“I always leave with concrete ideas of things that I can implement right away.” Kamalah Fletcher, Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida

“It was really energizing to be able to talk about issues going on in communities. I look forward to the day for everyone to truly come together and move a movement forward.” Sharayna Douglas, who works with at-risk youth

A Reminder to those who RSVPed to Tip of the Iceberg?

Don't forget to join us tomorrow, from 12-2PM at the Catalyst Miami Training Room!

Although RSVP deadline was today before 12 PM, Call in as soon as possible!
You might have the chance to join us for this very special event!
Lunch will be sponsored by Allegany Franciscan Ministries.

The Second Session of Democracy Summer

By Bryan Troupe, Catalyst Miami Communications Intern

The second session of Democracy Summer was a success! Participants discussed a variety of different topics ranging from a neo-liberalism (headed by Jake Coker-Dukowitz) to the dos and don'ts of lobbying (presented by our CEO Daniella Levine). Democracy Summer’s goal is for nonprofit organizers to be able to advocate more efficiently after completing the 8-week program.

There were several group activities that kept the members of the group interested in the opportunity to learn a lot more about each other. One of the activities, aptly named "Six Degrees of Separation", consisted of each individual making a list of things that they liked, and then finding others in the group that liked at least five of those same things.

LaRhonda Odom headed another great activity. This one aimed to show how the wealthiest 10% compared to the bottom 90% of income owners. Ten participants were seated in a line of ten chairs, when suddenly six of those seated were made to stand as their chairs were given to one person - who represented the top 10% of the wealthiest members of society. An observation that many of the group made was that those removed from their seats appeared to have a difficult time organizing themselves in order to get those chairs back that were owned by one person. This seemed to identify with the top 10% of today's most wealthy individuals being given preference in the tax system, while the rest of society are not able to properly organize themselves in order to create a level playing field.

This informative group session ended Week 2 on an incredible and positive note. The following session is titled "Organizing Concepts." Week 3 here we come!

Democracy Summer is a program of Catalyst Miami being offered by our Civic Life Academy through the sponsorship of the Allegany Franciscan Ministries.