Services for Inspired Propinquity

Tue Apr 15 20:48:13 CDT 2008

[ed:  Kathy and Windy respond to Phil's questions.]

From: Kathy Partridge <interfaithfunders at yahoo.com>

Hi friends,

I can't comment on whether her services are offered at a fair price or 
not (though in my market, counselling at $95/week would not be consider 
overpriced) but I can vouch that Windy Cooler is a real person.  She was 
director at one time of a grantee I worked with, and I had a number of 
professional conversations and well-run site visits with her.  That's 
not a name one easily forgets!

Cheers,

Kathy Partridge
Executive Director
Interfaith Funders
www.interfaithfunders.org
2719 Denver Ave.
Longmont, CO  80503
Voice 720-494-9011
Fax 708-585-6434  Cell 303-594-6434

***********************************

From: Windy Cooler-Stith <windy_coolerstith at yahoo.com>

Hi,

I'm the director of the SIP program (inspiredpropinquity.com). We offer 
mentorship and direct research to organizers for a highly personalized, 
intimate, and confidential one year program. I saved up for two years to 
take the needed time to build the program. SIP is now eating deeply into 
those savings.

I'm not sure what causes the writer to call SIP a potential scam, 
exactly, except that, as he points out -- I would like to be paid for 
the work I do. This seemed like the main point of his complaint. I hope 
I am misunderstanding something.

Organizers have a tendency to think we shouldn't be paid for our labor. 
I disagree of course, but with that in mind, we know that organizers 
aren't exactly a rich bunch anyway. No one pays us enough for us to be 
good targets of a con. Frankly, I think the real fair value of two hours 
a week, for one year, of specialized research and true one on one 
coaching with a relevantly veteran worker, who has set her whole life 
around making the time to do this, is indeed $5,000 annually. That 
breaks down into $50 an hour for access to a flexible worker with no job 
stability, no benefits, and all the overhead expenses. More than fair, 
in fact, is the price. I've got rent to pay like anyone else. Eventually 
I would like to have permanently employed, well-paid, unionized 
employees and licensed therapists, etc. Building that on $50 an hour is 
something of a challenge.

Like most organizers, I sadly almost never get paid the real fair value 
of my work though, despite my philosophy and my rent needs. I know what 
it means to pursue one's passion despite all obstacles. In this case I 
barter and offer steep discounts in the pursuit of my dream project - 
SIP. The SIP logo was designed by Ricardo Levins Morales, a legend in 
the organizing world, through a research barter, for instance. I just 
agreed to a research barter with the leftist band Emma's Revolution, in 
exchange for the use of one of their songs for another semi-paying client.

The services I am growing at SIP are not readily available to organizers 
in other forms at all, and certainly not for free, as the writer claims. 
I'm not sure what he even means, actually. I needed him to help me 
network when I was a teenage mother living off wellfare and organizing 
bus riders in Montgomery, Alabama if he does know of ample 
opportunities. I started out as a volunteer organizer several years ago. 
I never got the level of help I offer though I certainly looked. As a 
paid organizer I never got any help at all. I certainly survived and 
grew, despite all this -- but I am not the norm.

To elaborate, as a volunteer, I experienced wonderful, but very 
short-term, mentorship from an organizer employed at the Center for 
Third World Organizing -- that cost much, much more per hour than what I 
am even asking for. This was paid for by the Center for Community Change 
on my behalf. Their welcome decision to offer me any mentorship at all 
had to have been one that traveled through a vast bureaucracy of 
decision makers, influenced by their own policy targets and politics at 
the time. While I have nothing but gratitude to the CCC and to the CTWO 
for the aid I personally received, even if I really needed more, I also 
know that thousands upon thousands of community volunteers and paid 
organizers with tremendous potential are chewed up and spit out without 
such attention. I would like to see the day when we can chose and get 
help on demand, sans even so much as the real need for that benevolent 
bureaucracy to intervene on our behalf. Organizations like CCC have a 
role in providing organizers with development programs and they always 
will. SIP represents a different role - the opportunity to choose what 
you need when you need it and get it on demand.

To be clear, I and SIP welcome organizations forward thinking enough to 
retain SIP for their employees and volunteers. It is good for organizing 
by reducing burnout and increasing skill and capacity. It is good for 
organizations for the same reasons. I would hope we can all see that. 
What I and SIP oppose is that such kindness and progressive action on 
the part of employers and leaders be a requirement for organizers to 
receive any aid at all. We should be able to choose it for ourselves too. 

And research made directly available to field staff and volunteers on 
demand is of low-no availability. Skill in research is also limited. I 
have to admit that I am hurt, but also -- and more so -- stupefied, that 
the writer apparently did not even do a basic google search to find some 
small, but documented, taste of who it is that I (or those recommending 
the service) am from the SIP website, news services, and other readily 
available resources. I am hardly an enemy of the people. Yes, writer, we 
need research.

The idea behind the SIP is to offer good, solid, confidential, flexible 
help directly to organizers based on their own declared need for it. 
That is powerful and radical. We often don't think of ourselves as 
people with our own needs and lives. I was at the Labor Notes conference 
this weekend. I met amazing organizers struggling under immense 
pressures, unaddressed by their employers. Some of these folks I've 
known for a long time, others I had just met. One organizer said that 
our progressive employers are hypocrites because they don't "walk the 
walk" when it comes to us. She was complaining about the 12 hour days, 
the underpaying, the emotional blackmail we sometimes suffer. She was 
also, in my opinion, making a comment about her own misused dedication 
to her work and the abuse she herself imposes on her life.

It is we who are the hypocrites when we ask people to stand up for 
themselves in our organizing, yet are unwilling to do the same for 
ourselves and our families. Just like our constituents and communities, 
we too are mortal, and sometimes oppression runs so deep we need the 
care of someone else to see it for what it is and step up to the plate 
to change our lives with the full force of our conviction. Sometimes 
this conviction is n the form of action, other times it must take the 
form of self-nurture.

I think SIP, and anything that comes after it in this vein, is only one 
part of the solution. Though, as I stress, the services do have a role, 
we, as organizers, also need to join staff unions and the National 
Organizers Alliance (which SIP is in contact with), or other organizer 
constituent organizations to make a stand for the craft we practice. We 
need to informally show kindness and mentorship to our sisters and 
brothers. We need to take more walks and do more Yoga or bowling or 
whatever. What we suffer in the field results in bad organizing, 
uniformed organizing, and bitter, emotionally and often, even physically 
impoverished organizer families.

Not every, or even most, organization is poisonous to our health, but we 
need the freedom and the strength to take a stand when a stand is 
needed. And even in the best, and the majority of organizations, we are 
not free to speak our most intimate thoughts with confidence and 
confidentiality. The price is high. We can see it. I hardly need 
describe it any further to any seasoned organizer. We self-oppress more 
than we are oppressed. We work long hours because we expect it of 
ourselves. We run ourselves into the ground. We choose our own problems. 
And when we don't, when it really is the poisonous organization that 
hurts us, we often still don't do anything to address our problems. We 
stay or we leave. But we are burning out at alarming rates. Where does 
this leave our work and our souls?

We must, for our sake and the sake of the trade and our movement, give 
ourselves permission to retain appropriate professional services for 
ourselves when, for whatever reason, it becomes necessary.

SIP is not a member organization. It will never be a member 
organization. That is not its role. It is a very small service provider 
offering quality, thoughtful offerings in the name of solidarity - and 
asking the right to feed the kids and pay the rent at the same time. SIP 
is walking the walk it talks too. SIP lives the passion but it pays its 
own bills. The director has a life to live in the sunshine too.

I'm not sure what else to say about the offerings or the philosophy to 
make them seem less amorphous, as the writer puts it. They are perhaps 
that way from necessity. Everyone needs something different. SIP offers 
counseling and research, one on one, for one year, in any combination of 
ways.

Perhaps the writer dislikes the concept. While one certainly may, that 
is not quite the same thing as the concept's illegitimacy.

If you have any more questions, you may feel free to write to me at 
WCStith at InspiredPropinquity.com. Our webiste again is 
InspiredPropinquity.com

Thank you and best,
W

Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
> --------
> This is a COMM-ORG 'colist' message.
> All replies to this message come to COMM-ORG only.
> --------
>  
> [ed:  Phil has some questions about the program that others may be able 
> to address.]
>
> From: Phil Prehn <phil at sunaction.org>
>
>
> This program that was touted on a recent e-mail top the list smells like 
> a scam to me.  $5K for amorphous services to organizers that are readily 
> available for free in other formats?
>
> What's up with this?
>
> Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
>   
>> --------
>> This is a COMM-ORG 'colist' message.
>> All replies to this message come to COMM-ORG only.
>> --------
>>  
>> From: Windy Cooler-Stith <windy_coolerstith at yahoo.com>
>>
>>
>> Dear Friends and Colleagues,
>>  
>> Announcing Services for Inspired Propinquity!
>>  
>> After months and months of work, SIP is truly up and running and does 
>> indeed have a working website. Please visit it at 
>> http://inspiredpropinquity.com and join the mailing list to be a part of 
>> the very new on-line community we hope to grow with, currently, a 
>> newsletter and community calender.
>>  
>> For those of you who may not know, I began a very novel project this 
>> January. It is a counseling/mentorship and direct service provider 
>> solely for social justice organizers - that emphasises the humanity of 
>> the person who is the organizer. I don't know of any other organization 
>> offering identical services.
>>  
>> After years of organizing we all know that organizing is hard work. It 
>> is necessarily so. We associate intimately and empathize with people who 
>> have been institutionally abused as we try to make them whole, to move 
>> them with others, democratically, to their own vision of justice. We 
>> must face our own "isms" and other issues in doing so. We must work odd 
>> hours to fit into the chaotic lives we serve. Somehow, we must also meet 
>> our own needs for family, love, and a private world. The work is often 
>> made harder still for the most vital volunteer organizer by the myriad 
>> effects of poverty. For the paid organizer, who may also be living in 
>> some form of poverty, the role is made harder still through 
>> bureaucracies that sometimes don't support the real work at hand and an 
>> encouraged, unrealistic sense of his role as worker. Organizers are 
>> knocked out earlier than professional boxers as a result. Though no one 
>> seems to be studying us, we succumb to depression, alcoholism, and other 
>> health problems at alarming, visible rates. And my lord, for some 
>> reason, some of our brightest young organizers desire to become lawyers, 
>> not veteran organizers, after a couple of years grueling in the field.
>>  
>> SIP intends to reach out to this community through highly personalized, 
>> confidential, one-on-one listening sessions, once a week, for an entire 
>> year - one organizer at a time. We provide excellent clerical and 
>> research services for that organizer, to inform, and lighten her load. 
>> We also offer strategic advice, skills training, networking 
>> opportunities, and brainstorming sessions.  The mission of SIP, in 
>> short, is to build communities through healthy organizers. We will build 
>> whatever works for each unique organizer for a flat annual fee.
>>  
>> To avoid limitations on the types of aid we can offer - and to whom, we 
>> have registered as an LLC. Donations are therefore not tax deductible. I 
>> hope, though, you can consider including us in your giving plan this 
>> year as we grow a scholarship fund and put out our first few newsletters 
>> this summer. We will be sure to follow up with you on how your money as 
>> used.
>>  
>> Thanks and Best,
>>  
>> Windy Cooler-Stith
>>
>>
>> Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862):"It is not enough to tell me that you 
>> worked hard to get your gold. So does the devil work hard."
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