Community Change
As Chief Writer for Community Change, I crafted much of the public-facing content that captures the organization’s mission, vision, and impact. These are some of the products for which I was the lead writer.
Path to Power: 2018-2033
The story of this country is of an unsteady march toward an idea of freedom. We make great leaps toward liberty and justice, and then fall back. Two steps forward, one step back.
When Community Change began our strategic planning process in March 2016, it was not obvious where we were in that cycle, but following the 2016 elections it became clearer that we were heading backwards. We have fought to change that trajectory—to create the conditions for transformational change that moves us in the direction of justice, equity, and an inclusive democracy and economy.
Path to Power is our statement of purpose and Community Change’s role in this moment. Two years into its implementation, our assumptions and strategic framework largely hold: that Black, Brown, and immigrant communities must build greater power; that community organizing must evolve if we want civil society to act as a countervailing power to the state and to concentrated wealth; that a bold governing agenda must present more than incremental policy prescriptions; and that changing the electorate is essential to political clout and requires an alternative approach to traditional party politics.
The Arc of Transformation: 2022 Annual Report
As we reflect on the past year, we’re holding both the highs and the lows.
We have seen how government actions, like the Child Tax Credit, can quickly transform people’s lives — and how heartbreaking the government’s refusal to act can be. We’ve fought back, even as we watched families pushed back into poverty with the end of cash programs amid soaring prices. We’ve felt the devastating loss as our elected officials slammed the door on attempt after attempt to win citizenship for 11 million undocumented people. We’ve stood with women, the LGBTQ community, and communities of color as the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back the right to an abortion and would-be authoritarians declared war on trans youth and true history.
We continue to fight because we know that the arc of transformation will bend with our persistence.
In 2022, we saw proof that the long, behind-the-scenes work of organizing can open political possibilities and — over time — create the space for transformation. We saw the returns on our work in New Mexico, where a decade of organizing with child care providers and parents brought about a constitutional amendment that guarantees funding for child care as a right. We saw it in Michigan, where three election cycles and countless issue campaigns delivered the political power to protect voting rights, to prevent the exploitation of Black and brown Michiganders, and advance the people’s legislative agenda.
The arc is long and the stakes are high. But the tenacity of everyday people — organized from the ground up — will deliver returns beyond our wildest imagination.
Read the full 2022 Annual Report here.
Rising With Resilience: 2020 Annual Report
When we look back, there will always be a before 2020 and an after. Each one of us experienced that year with our own unique mix of pain and fear, determination and hope, grief and grit.
A series of events reshaped each of our lives — a global pandemic, economic devastation, the uprising for Black lives, our democracy at a precipice. Their impact, however, depended on the color of our skin, the location of our birth, and the resources available to us. We may still be bound together in a single cloth of destiny, as Dr. King preached, but it does not cover us equally.
Even amid the upheaval, core principles have remained true: there are no shortcuts on the Path to Power. Community Change rooted ourselves in the fundamentals of organizing to build Black, brown, and immigrant power, and we rose to meet the year’s sky-high stakes with innovation and imagination.
Our community of partners, supporters, allies, organizers, leaders, and every member of this Community Change family— you helped us see that we cannot return to the old normal that never worked for so many of our communities.
Together, we began to build a political home with grassroots leaders hungry for connection and agency in the fights ahead.
Together, we protested, organized, voted, and as one part of this movement ecosystem, we changed the country.