February 2008 Convening

Mark and Jennifer CLIO Paticipants at UMass Labor Resource Center ken smiling
vheryl jim
Khadija Pat
Janet Guled
The Civic Leadership Institute for Organizers (CLIO)

Co-Sponsored by Community Labor United and UMass-Boston Labor Resource Center
February 7 and 8, 2008
Boston, MA

"These convenings are valuable because you find out that the struggles are really the same everwhere, and you find strategies to bring back home to more effectively deal with them and to build power for working people on a local level. I enjoyed meeting my counterparts from other places in the country and spending real quality time getting to know them and feeling like I am connected to something larger than my own backyard."
- Mark Spadafore, Executive Director, Syracuse Alliance for a New Economy (SANE)

"The program that BP developed was very interactive and useful to me - I not only had a chance to hear about the 'big picture' issues that face a lot of groups like ours, but also had the opportunity to develop concrete strategies to expand our labor-community coalition in our own city."

- Linda Lyons Butler, Executive Director, Working Families Partnership Of Philadelphia & Vicinity


Agenda

Power Point

Participant List

CLI and Regional Power Building

Discussion Notes

Leaders of diverse community and labor organizations gathered recently in Boston
to discuss strategies for deepening labor-community partnerships beyond temporary, transactional alliances to lasting coalitions which can build real power for working families and disenfranchised communities.

A major focus of the sessions -- which included case study presentations, group discussions and small group exercises in planning and strategic analysis -- was on techniques for Regional Power Building.

Participants had the unique opportunity to pose questions of regional leaders

Presenters

who
are building innovative labor-community coalitions for social change, and to learn about how they have been able to secure major wins by integrating the 3 components of Regional Power Building:

  • Organizing & Advocacy
  • Research & Policy Development
  • Political Action

In attendance were union and community organizers, political directors and community-labor coalition leaders from 5 regions: Chicago, Syracuse, Sonoma, Honolulu and Toronto, as well as several past organizers of Civic Leadership Institutes in Boston, New Haven & Hartford.

Andrea van den Heever of CCNE and Lisa Clauson of CLU: Andrea and Lisa presented case studies on coalition-building, and discussed how a long-term vision for community-labor partnership changes the nature of an organization's relationships and everyday work. Andrea van den Heever, President of Community Labor United and Lisa Clauson, Executive Director of Community Labor United, discussed how a long-term vision for community-labor partnership changes the nature of an organization's relationships and everyday work.Renae Reese

Renae Reese, Director of CCNE-Hartford, talked about the how the Civic
Leadership Institute helped their start-up organization build new kinds of
relationships among diverse community and labor groups with little history of
collaboration.

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