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Meet the PEPP Organizers |
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In February of 2007, Chuck Stebbins joined PEPP as a half-time Community Organizer. He was a System Change Advocate at a Local Independent Living Center—Freedom Resource Center for Independent Living. Chuck is working on get out the vote, political forms, candidate accountability and connecting nonprofits to their constituencies and getting the client/consumer voice represented in human service policy issues in the local area. In Mid September of 2007, we hired Octavio Gomez as a Community Organizer. Octavio is working on tenant issues, police practice issues as well as our beginning work on Racial Equity. Octavio worked in the technology sector for the past eight years and is now focusing on community building with PEPP. This expansion of staff
is
giving PEPP a larger presence of influence
in this community. Our shift to building
a larger alliance through nonprofits and community groups is beginning
to show
greater potential for new people to get involved in improving this
community.
What Has PEPP Been Up to in 2008? We
have been focusing on
improving the organizational effectiveness
and the capacity building of PEPP and will increase Civic Engagement in
Fargo-Moorhead nonprofits and community groups in Fargo-Moorhead. Increase Civic Engagement in
nonprofits and community groups in
PEPP staff has increased in
the Past Year. Duke Schempp, the dynamic
executive Director,
has worked at PEPP since 1990. Lysa
Ringquist, Co- founder/ Community Organizer/Leader of PEPP is focused
on
neighborhood Organizing, mentoring women, traning and mentoring other
Organizers. Last February, Chuck
Stebbins was hired as an Organizer working half-time for PEPP. Chuck
came to us
from the Independent Living sector with an emphasis on disability
rights. He now
is an enthusiastic proponent of voter engagement at PEPP.
Last Fall, PEPP brought on its newest
Organizer, Octavio Gomez. Octavio has been
developing and honing his skills as an organizer. Thus far, his work
has been
primarily focued on (1) tenant issues; (2) second chance opportunities;
and (eventually)
(3) organizing around police practices and criminal justice system
issues. Bennett Park Cooperative This work
highlighted the need in our community for organizing in
Manufactured Home parks. Through our relationship with All Parks
Alliance for
Change (APAC), we are now pursuing ways to work collaboratively. APAC was able to leverage funds and we now
house an APAC Community Organizer in our office. Working
in unison on community projects and supporting
the organizing work of APAC has allowed us to build power in
Manufactured Home
communities in this region. Tenant Organizing During the work on the criminal record
expungemnent bill we uncovered
other community social justice issues that prompted us to do outreach
in shelters,
schools and organizations and seek support and endorsements. Our group gained the support and collaborated
with the Moorhead Human Rights commission. We made efforts to reach out
to the local
law enforcement. However, we were met with opposition to our position
and
work. We then met with city council
members in an effort to ally them with our group. We also lobbied local
legislators, involved students in housing and parking policy changes
and made
progress in the local community. After
the 2007 legislative session, we decided to take a different approach
to focus
on two specific policy issues in the In reflection, during the last year we
have spotlighted the
need for building a group of constituents and organizations to analyze
police
stops in We began this year as a continuation of
building a
tenant based organization and the focus was on Criminal Background
Checks as
the major issue. Even though the focus
remained the same, statewide policy focus shifted frames and got much
farther
in the second session. The golden
opportunity that emerged in this project was the Police Stop Data and a
concentration
on racial profiling. Although it was not
in the original proposal, a strong connection to these issues emerged
from this
work. This year, the criminal
records/Expungement bill became
“Second Chance Opportunities” and we were able to connect deeper with
the The Police stop data group has
(1) built its message; (2) gathered
people’s stories; (3) begun
strategizing how stories will be gathered and stored for future
purposes; (4) develpoed
four major goals and (5) has planned the launch of several Town Halls
this
summer. In addition, new information has surfaced and we are now
teaming up
with the ACLU of Minnesota to do several Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA)
requests to get several year’s worth of data that we were not given in
the
previous months. After we have the opportunity to gather and review the
mentioned data (if it is released to us), we will incorporate this new
information in our Town Hall discussions. Our plan is to move forward
with the
Town Halls in the fall with or without the new data. We will localize
the
issues and work towards local policy changes in
Our work has focused on local
nonprofits, New American
organizations, Latino organizations, Native communities and a few
immigrant led
groups. We have been working with
advocates, students, working class people, homeless and formerly
homeless individuals
and progressive city and legislative leaders.
Efforts have been made to shift
agencies to see their “clients” as “constituents”.
This shift has been very strong in several
agencies working with us through the criminal justice system issues,
but still
needs to come through more clearly in the Waking the Sleeping Giant
human
service nonprofits. We have made some
leaps through the FM Homeless Coalition Homeless Connect event, where
we
assisted them in holding a candidates forum with the Watch our web page for examples of what we are moving in the community.
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