Grantee Spotlight with Action Now Institute
Action Now Institute’s Executive Director Deborah Harris sat down with the Woods Fund to discuss the organization’s work on Chicago’s south and west sides, how that work has changed during COVID, a recent organizing trip to DC, and what we need to do now – and tomorrow – to enact real change for not only for our city, but our state and nation.
* This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Why don't we start off with you telling me a little bit about what the organization and the work you are doing?
Action now institute is a grantee of the Woods Fund. We have historically organized in the black community, on the south and west sides of Chicago. For me, coming into this work, I knew that having deeper, more intentional organizing practices in the black community would really build trusting relationships – sustainable relationships – and grant more space for impoverished people to realize that they actually have a say in what happens in their communities, and that they can be a part of that change.
I came into this position and into the organization just at a really interesting time, and then, you know... COVID! I was like:
How do we still do the work? How do we still build trusting meaningful relationships with people? How do we get information to people? How do we educate folks? How do we help with daily needs that they have?
Our work – whether it's online or offline – we still work to find a balance with educational workshops on civic engagement and what it means to be a part of the democratic process. We host community listening sessions in person, we've hosted online conversations, by ourselves and with community partners, both locally and nationally.
We go into communities, we still drop information and door knock with policy information, housing, education. And when it comes to the budget and defunding the police we've been holding smaller social distance gatherings to get information to people and also to hear from them – to hear how they're really dealing with what's happening, how they're really understanding what's happening in our nation and our city right now. And what it really means for them to change their neighborhoods with what that really looks like. We’ve been balancing that work online and offline as well.
We also moved into spaces of mutual aid because I have to explain to the organization as a whole and to funders that I can’t expect someone from an impoverished community to actually hear me fully when I talk about government, talk about voting, or I talk about policy, and they are hungry. They don't know where their next meal is coming from. Their children are in trouble, you know, what I'm saying?
Doing mutual aid work gives us the opportunity to serve in a more meaningful right now way. Whether it's seniors, homeless youth, families – we're going into communities, we're talking to people and asking off the bat: what is it that you need? Then we're making those partnerships with social service organizations or organizations that do food drives or that can help with personal hygiene needs, have resources for children, or are able to help people pay their rent, or are getting PPE to communities that need them. We're doing the work and providing what they need right now. And using those opportunities to listen, to have conversations with them, to again, share information, to get a feel of the community so that we know how to create access points for education, access points to get them involved in social, racial, economic justice campaigns. We're really focusing on investing first, and COVID, actually really brought us there. What does it mean to be a transformational organizer, versus a transactional organizer or organization? It means investing in people first. It means listening first. It means building relationships.
We've also been mobilizing people and supporting the fund work – supporting work around removing CPD [Chicago Police Department] from CPS [Chicago Public Schools], supporting work around COVID-19, being a part of new coalitions of Black leaders. We are a part of the coalition Black Leaders Building Together which was birthed from COVID. And realizing that in order for our communities to be healthy, we have to physically be healthy.
Making sure that our elected officials knew that we weren't just gonna lay down when they were closing hospitals in Black communities. The hospitals in Black communities weren't being outfitted with the equipment they needed to serve a city in the middle of the pandemic. It was being a part of those fights, being a part of our Supreme Court fights on the national levels. All of these things play into how our liberation is realized.
We've been working locally, and we've been working nationally. The goal is to create really clear through lines of how we realize liberation and how we make sure that government and its power is wielded from the people and their voice, what they want, and what their needs are.
When COVID first hit it was primary season! You're out there at the polls, and they're like, ‘everybody has to go home!’ I was like, well, wait a minute…. One of the most important things for us was realizing that the communities that we serve – we have to be with them. These aren't communities that have access to online access or computers. These are the poorest of the poor Black community. So if we're actually going to do our job, then I guess we just gotta strap up in a hazmat suit and get out there.
We had to think about how we gather in socially distant ways. How do we always have PPE, hand sanitizers, and gloves on hand to still do the work? It took us a couple of weeks to figure it out. But we had to figure it out. With our door knocking, we always wear PPE, gloves, have hand sanitizer… we do literature drops. We're dropping PPE as well as informational packets and flyers to people. But we're also using those flyers to say, ‘Hey on this day we're having a community listening session in the park, bring a chair where we can be socially distanced and still talk to people and inform them about what's going on. And then we're finding out who has access to what, inviting them to join us online, but our mutual aid work takes place in person.
If we're an organization that is building leaders and organizing and we're doing that in the most impoverished communities in Chicago – we have to be present. That means we just have to take more precautions. The work has shifted, and we balance the online and offline organizing, but there is an intention on being with our people and just making sure that we’re protected and we’re bringing protection when we go out.
So the election is right around the corner. I hear you’ve just come back from DC – or are you still in DC? Tell us about the work you've been doing at the capital.
We just got back from DC. DC is the belly of the beast...it really is. And so as someone who was a part of the original ground team for the Brett Kavanaugh fight I knew that going back to DC was going to be triggering for me. But I knew being on the ground in DC was also important, because that Supreme Court nomination, those decisions that happen up top, they most certainly filter down into our city into our state. And we've already seen how the administration moves, how they stack federal courts to pretty much support a racist administration's agenda. Our goal at the Institute is to make sure that Black folks understand how local and national politics play into our everyday lives. We took activists from Chicago and from downstate with us. We partnered with Center for Popular Democracy Action for the Supreme Court fight. Our c4 (Action Now) went to DC to support ground protests.
Of course we were faced with anti protesters that worship the ground this administration walks on, and have very little respect for the human dignity of other people. There were moments of clashing which is extremely stressful. Before we went down we put out calls to action to our community of people downstate to make sure they were calling Senator Dick Durbin, they were calling the Democratic leaders wherever they [live] who were sitting on the Judiciary Committee that was part of potentially pushing [Amy Coney Barrett] through. We had calls to actions before we even went down to DC and as we were there, we were pushing to meet with those people on the Judiciary Committee, to make sure that they knew that we're here, we're not oblivious to what's happening on the national level, you can't just make decisions without making sure you're checking in with your people.
That's part of the fight – being present. It was really important that the state of Illinois was present. One of the activists from Kane County – I don’t want to say cornered Senator Dick Durban – but caught him while Senator Blumenthal was speaking, introduced himself, and Senator Durbin was really surprised that he was there. And I was like, this shouldn't be a surprise. We, us that are in this work, that are saying that we're organizing for power and for healing and for liberation need to be everywhere. We need to be everywhere and the people that we vote into office need to know that we're going to be everywhere. We need to know what you're doing, we need to know that you are actually serving the people in the way that they want you to, we need you to know that if we get a hiccup, then we're coming to find you whether you're in recess or not. So this trip is really important, not just for what it means for this Supreme Court nomination and how it will really shift the trajectory even more so of our country, but we need to get used to having more of a say in our national politics and being more present.
And it was stressful. Our first action started at 8am and the last one ended at 2. We were marching and telling our stories. We were meeting with our senators. We had them come out at a certain point to speak to us. There were clashes with anti protesters. The whole thing was stressful because tensions are high, people are tired, are very tired, and we feel like we're being worn down. But we have to rally and it was a quick kind of round trip, but it was worth it because we finally pushed Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to walk out today. That pressure, that consistent pressure – calling, texting, emailing, showing up... I wish the same thing would have happened during Kavanaugh because oh my God, but it moved into a space where they were able to walk out. Even during that, the rest of the Judiciary Committee took illegal steps to approve a vote that wasn't legal to approve. So consistency in our presence, our awareness in what happens, is so important.
We won in one capacity and we lost in another capacity, but we have to continue to show up because the vote isn't over and I just pray that we continue to show up, not just in the Supreme Court fight, but in making sure that our fight at the polls is strong, and afterwards is even stronger.
Tell me about that – the work you're doing right now for the election and how you see that work changing after the election. Because I find talking to different nonprofits right now that there is often a sense of uncertainty about what comes next, what happens after November 3. What will the landscape look like for your work moving forward?
We’ve been on scenario planning calls since March / April with our national partners. More recently, as we move closer to the election, we have been part of organizing voter security actions in Wisconsin and Michigan, recruiting people, working with Indivisible Illinois, to educate people on voting this year – mail in voting, the pros and cons, what’s true or false. Getting people signed up to be poll workers, getting people signed up to be volunteers in swing states. Some of the work has been in person like registering voters – over almost 300 voters on our end – we dropped maybe 1000 pieces of literature and the communities and small businesses and gas stations.
Regarding voting, we're still in election planning scenario calls but a lot of it is based upon three things: whether or not Trump concedes, safety – because regardless of what happens there are going to be serious safety issues, so trying to work with those organizations that protested in March, making sure that those organizations that organize in a different way, that we can be supportive structures for them and can try to keep them safe – then also making sure that our people understand what our state timelines are to make sure that our votes are counted appropriately.
So we've been working on that. But honestly, no matter how this election shakes out there will be some pieces of our organizing that change, but we will still need to be present every day in our communities. We can't just let the election happen, whatever results happen, and not prepare for the remainder of our elections. Not continue to build community with marginalized folks. Because their conditions are going to get even worse. We have to continue with our mutual aid efforts because we are very certainly in a recession and people don't want to talk about that.
We have to be more intentional with how we're serving, how we're adding additional safety barriers for those that will be in the streets. At some point we will also coordinate with our national partners to see how we will be adding power there. There are still seats of power that are up for election in the next few years. There are real safety concerns and resource concerns. We're making sure we have relationships in place where we continue to serve our community and also hold our local elected officials accountable, our state and our senators and house folks that are in DC. That we are all making sure that we're all engaged and fighting together because if Trump stays then we are entering into a very dangerous space and we need to know the people that we have in power now are committed to protecting us because we've seen how he's gone after other states and governors. We need to build a more holistic state-aligned plan for how our C3s and our C4s work together. That is something I'm trying to push people to understand and get on the same page with.
Deborah, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today. I really appreciate it.
