Blog
The Story of my Time at Spirit in Action and the Experiences I will Take with Me – by Lia Kaz
Hi everyone. This is my last blog as Spirit in Action’s North Carolina Community Organizer for the We the People: Working Together program. This fall, I will start at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for my Masters of Social Work. Before I leave I wanted to share with you some things I’ve […]
The Choice Should be Ours: Fair Maps for a Fair Democracy – by Lia Kaz
Tags: community organizing, empowerment, leadership, Lia Kaz, popular education, Social Justice, spirit in action, We the People
Gerrymandering: Because, why should voters choose their representatives, when representatives can choose the voters? Imagine North Carolina as a puzzle. Jagged lines are drawn across the map, spreading across counties like greedy fingers and into neighborhoods like silent snakes. North Carolina, and many states across the country, has these oddly shaped voting districts that end […]
Let’s Discuss Healthcare – Community Meeting
Tags: civic engagement, Collective Visioning, community organizing, empowerment, Lia Kaz, linda stout, We the People
We the People: Working Together recently held its first 2017 Monthly Community Meeting – Let’s Discuss Healthcare. In these meetings, we focus on issues that community members identify and develop plans of action. We ground ourselves in real life experiences and build bridges to the policy realm by making research accessible and political leaders reachable. […]
The Joy of Organizing Along the Road to Justice
It is a powerful time to be doing election work. When we ride out to the communities, there is a merging of fear and excitement. We round the unpaved roads through the Blue Ridge Mountains, rural Appalachia full of reminders that there was once a thriving industry here. We pull up to the mobile home […]
If my mother could challenge racism in 1960 North Carolina, what will you do for Justice today?
Tags: civic engagement, community organizing, cultural shift, empowerment, get out the vote, linda stout, spirit in action
I remember when I was about seven years old, my mother took me with her to a small country store that served as a store, gas station, post office and now I know a voter registration center. We went in and stood in line behind another woman at the post office window. It was the […]
How do we sustain HOPE in times of crisis?
Tags: Collective Visioning, community organizing, cultural shift, empowerment, leadership, linda stout, popular education, spirit in action, We the People
It’s really hard to have a positive outlook or hope with all that’s happening in the world today: political chaos, hate, violence, environmental disaster, and a list much too long to write here. And worse, it seems that people are feeding off all this hatred and chaos and it continues to grow, taking over everything […]
The Power of Plain Ol’ Human Talk
Tags: civic engagement, Collective Visioning, cultural shift, empowerment, leadership, linda stout, popular education, spirit in action
Popular Education, Economic Justice and Civic Engagement “Let’s get on with technology as a way of connecting us to people and places we have never known and have never seen. But let us not give up the power of plain ol’ human talk to do the same.” -Johnnetta B. Cole During a family reunion at the […]
