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. 

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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.
 
Capacity Building of PEPP
GOAL--To build a strong board, develop well trained staff, develop a culture of Fundraising in the organization and increase the organization’s reflection of the community.

Increase Civic Engagement in nonprofits and community groups in Fargo and Moorhead
GOAL—To develop and organize the Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN Nonprofit community to engage their organizations and constituencies in democracy and civic engagement to impact social policies that affect the human service arena of the community

Capacity Building of PEPP
PEPP’s focus is on developing leaders from the communities we work in and maintaining a board that is representative of the community.  Our Anti-racism training and racial justice work has taught us to work towards developing an accountable and strong board as well as to address the dynamics of racism and oppression in our decisions and strategies.  We continually make efforts to recruit new board leaders and we pride ourselves on developing a strong and diverse board.  Currently we are focusing on making strides in the area of fundraising and we are also beginning a capitol campaign for the purchase and remodeling of our building.  Finally, we are researching the development of sustainable funding sources for system change and organizing in our area and have explored the development of a Community Shares MN chapter in the FM area.

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
PEPP was contracted as a Community organizer by the NorthCountry Development Fund (NCDF). We were presented an opportunity through their development proposal to move the Greenwood Mobile Home Manufactured Park into a resident based Cooperative.  We spent the past two years working with neighborhood leadership developing the organization and, eventually, promoting resident purchase of the park.  Our local work, relationship building, and visibility in the neighborhood assisted in the efforts of NCDF to develop an organization in this neighborhood.  Last fall the purchase of the park was realized and ownership was finally transferred to the residents.  We continued to assist the neighborhood leadership in their transition and then ended changed our role from organizing to observing and providing a supportive network to allow them to develop their organization, focusing on management and deal with infrastructure issues.

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
Criminal background checks and their impact on housing, became a dominant issue as our group met and worked on development of tenant based strategies (i.e., outreach, monthly tenant meetings, listening session, tenants rights workshops). We met with tenants, students, homeless people, and others struggling to find housing.  We also met with organizations providing services to those having difficulty securing housing.  In 2007 we were able to focus on statewide legislation and do a lobby campaign and groundswell in the Moorhead community.  At the end of the session, the legislation stalled. However, we have continued to focusing on Moorhead specific issues.  We have hired a new organizer focused on tenant screening issues and have conducted trainings which have resulted in moving this issue forward. In 2008, we (1) held lobby sessions; (2) held a student and community run forum of the candidates; (3) focused on housing and police issues; and (4) brought a voting constituency to the table in the local fall elections.

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 Moorhead police Department.  This was due in part to the Racial Equity Report card and a briefing the Minneapolis based Organizer Apprenticeship Project (OAP) did in Moorhead.  During the last year we have shifted our analysis to include a focus on race and a system focus on criminal justice policy.  As we met with people and organizations in the community, we concentrated on police stop practices as well as tenant screening issues. We now have two groups working in parallel, focusing on different aspects of the same Criminal Justice system.

In reflection, during the last year we have spotlighted the need for building a group of constituents and organizations to analyze police stops in Moorhead.  We have held 20 meetings since October. We have developed a strategic plan that will lead to better public accountability of the Police department and will build the organizing presence of people from the community,  Centro Cultural, Daughters of the Earth, The Immigrant Development Center, Mujeres Unidas, the new Sudanese organization and several others. Through the work on Police Accountability Issues new leaders have emerged and joined the work and we are also increasing membership in the group. Organizations that were once not working with each other are now collaborating with us and each other. Both issues are bringing us in contact with more people and we have the opportunity to impact a larger base.  We have begun to work on getting more organizational buy-in to organizing and we have focused the groups on criminal justice system issues.

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 Minneapolis based Council on Crime and Justice. We made significant inroads into the local Homeless shelters and deepened relationships with several organizations that provide services to the homeless. We had a very successful meeting at one of the shelters with two of our area legislators surrounded by people who were homeless and have criminal records which perpetuate their homelessness.  This meeting has created a good relationship with those two legislators and we have a dozen people working as a group to broaden the issue to new organizations and highlight local policies for a build up to the next legislative session.

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 Moorhead and also plan to take this model into Fargo to deal with the multiple social justice problems that have surfaced as a result of community interest around the Moorhead based work.

Capacity Building to do Civic Engagement and Community Organizing
In this work there is a broad goal to Increase Civic Engagement in nonprofits and community groups in Fargo and Moorhead.  Three projects that have moved us forward on our goal of increasing civic engagement have been the work of (1) Waking the Sleeping Giant; (2) assemblies on Capacity Building in collaboration with The Headwaters Foundation For Justice, and (3) work to do community organizing as well as to develop a two year Civic Engagement plan in conjunction with Main Street Project.

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 North Dakota candidates running for Governor.  We spend several months working with groups of homeless individuals and helping develop questions at issue with homeless individuals for the forum. We also facilitated a formerly homeless moderator to run the forum.  The audience was composed of many homeless individuals and the forum was a fantastic example of a constituent voice.  

Watch our web page for examples of what we are moving in the community.