Juanita Lewis - Moving People Along a Spectrum

Check out this conversation on the fundamentals of organizing with Juanita Lewis of Community Voices Heard.

With the release of our new Fundamentals of Community Organizing pamphlet, we are having a series of conversations with organizers about their take on the fundamentals and what they are doing right now to strengthen the craft. You can get a copy here and join the conversation.

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My first one on one with Juanita Lewis was in the waning days of the shelter in place phase of the pandemic. Like most Directors of organizing shops, she was trying to rebuild an organizing culture following one of the most disruptive stretches in a century. One of the first things Juanita said was “George, our organizers are going to be on the doors. We are going to be on-those-doors.” It was music to my ears. Juanita embodies the best of practicing and teaching the fundamentals of the organizing, while also bringing a razor sharp take on race, class and gender to the work. 

Juanita is the Executive Director of Community Voices Heard. She first organized in Minnesota, where she’s from. One of her first organizing jobs was with Minnesota ACORN. She then worked on multiple electoral campaigns in the state. The big moment was when she applied to be an organizer a thousand miles away, with Community Voices Heard in NYC. She was hired in 2009 and became their Yonkers Organizer, later became the lead organizer for Westchester, then the Hudson Valley Organizing Director, and three years ago became CVH’s Executive Director. 

We got together a couple weeks back to talk about the fundamentals of organizing. 

What fundamental do you feel is especially essential to teach right now? 

Meeting people where they’re at. Right now a lot of people who want to organize are holding the people we organize to a purity test, expecting them to think the same way they do - like they themselves came out of the womb knowing all the things. Organizers meet people where they are. It’s not about expecting people to be “for defund” and then being mad that they are not all about defund. It's about how we move people along the spectrum of what it means to divest from a carceral system and have real money put into housing and other things people need.

If we had talked ten years ago, what fundamental would you have said was the most important, and why now does “meeting people where they are” top the list? 

Ten years ago I might have said “recruiting people.” I think meeting people where they are is so important right now because our politics are so polarized. A kind of “If you do not think exactly like I do on all of it, you are the opposite.” There’s no room for anyone to be in between, to be somewhere else along that spectrum. We have to change that and meeting people where they are is one part of how we do it.

What are you all doing at CVH to ground organizers and members in good organizing fundamentals?

We have all of our training built into the organizational calendar, and everyone knows it. We do a day-long in-service every other month for our team. It’s basically a day-long training. We just break down different things - one on ones, campaign development, making propositions, or what have you. 

The Ella Baker School is our leadership training, which is a full day, focused on the members and leadership development. Then twice a year we run a three-day training for our organizers. One virtual and one in-person. 

I’ve been doing a lot of the training and so does our Organizing Director. Other folks on our organizing team do training, but only on things that are really good at doing. If someone’s good at one on ones, like really good, they will train on that, but you have to be really good at it to train on it. 

I love that you have to be really good at it to train on it. Also, It’s pretty easy, when you become a Director, to become less involved in training - I know that it happened to me and I'm not proud of it.  It’s easy to see you're making it a priority! 

Speaking of training, we just had 100 members go to Albany for a day-long lobby day at the Capitol. There was definitely some dusting off the cobwebs we had to go through because we have a lot of new organizers and because of Covid many have never organized a complicated trip like this - turnout, buses, routes, lining up meetings, prepping leaders, materials, events, logistics and so on. It went off beautifully - a powerful day for our members, and as far as developing organizers, as good as any training you could run.

I wrote this Fundamentals of Organizing Pamphlet in part because Shel Trapp’s Basics of Organizing pamphlet was a game-changer for me. Was there anything similar for you when you were getting started?

Really, in the first few years there wasn’t a pamphlet or book that was like that for me. But later, people said read Rules for Radicals - check, i read it. Someone said read Tools for Radical Democracy - check, read that. 

Oh right, Tools for Radical Democracy is a great organizing book that comes out of CVH organizing, written by Paul Getsos and Joan Minieri.

Yeah - what’s so great about that book is it has example raps for door knocking, it has checklists. I read it and was like “yeah, I’ll take some templates,” and this book has them. 

Those checklists and templates are so helpful! So, it sounds like these books were important, but maybe the most transformative teaching for you came from somewhere else. Where was that?

It was here at CVH. It was Stephen Roberson. Stephen was instrumental. He more than anyone really broke the craft down for me. The importance of relationships, the importance of action, the meaning of agitation, and like you said in the fundamentals pamphlet, seeing it as an act of love.

I had seen organizers do some of these things, but it was Stephen who broke each part down for me. He brought a respect and love of the craft that I want to instill in the team at CVH. 

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I’d be hard pressed to name an organizer who makes me more hopeful about the future of the craft than Juanita. You can learn more about Juanita and Community Voices Heard here.  You can follow CVH on Instagram and Twitter @cvhaction and you can find Juanita on twitter @juanita_lewis81