Metro IAF / IAF is Recruiting the Next Generation of Organizers

Change the Country from the Ground Up: Organize People & Build Power Organizations

Metro IAF / IAF is seeking to recruit, train, and develop a new generation of organizers to work in one of the groups that already exist and to assist in new strategies and targeted campaigns. We are recruiting organizers to work across the US in its 50+ affiliate organizations, especially in racially, religiously, ethnically, and politically diverse areas. Metro IAF / IAF is seeking women and men from colleges & universities (graduate & undergraduate), prison-to-college programs, seminaries, unions, the military, political campaigns, non-profits, health care, and other professions who are interested in exploring careers in organizing.

A Metro IAF / IAF organizer is a unique breed of organizer, someone who strives to become: 

A professional who works for the whole.

The Metro IAF / IAF organizer’s calling is in building a specific type of power that is relational, broad-based, institutional, fiercely nonpartisan, issue-oriented, long-term, and owned by the leaders of the organizations they build. 

An agent of change that is beyond a particular project or region.

Metro IAF / IAF organizers collaborate in the ongoing building of a power network of “affiliates” that is the modern Metro IAF / IAF. While an Metro IAF / IAF organizer typically has a particular focus in a local jurisdiction, our commitment to one another is the development of long-term and relational power to build and rebuild communities. Toward that end, Metro IAF / IAF organizers rotate among affiliates typically every five to seven years and are willing to make at least one major move in their career to build out a state or a region or start a new project. 

A student and practitioner of relational power, not a person with all the answers.

An Metro IAF / IAF organizer is committed to the study of how power has been wielded throughout history, how power operates in the world as it is, and how a different kind of power that comes from the organized people and organized money in our cities and regions might make a difference in the world. 

Metro IAF / IAF organizers spend their time exercising a series of habits: 

Relating:

Metro IAF / IAF organizers commit to the habit and practice of relating to others across the divides that separate people within a specific context through individual one-to-one and group meetings, imparting always and above all else a relational culture within organizations. This habit is the building block of creating relational power. 

Learning:

Metro IAF / IAF organizers commit to a habit of learning that includes reading, art installations, music performances, public speeches, listening to podcasts, and developing their own spiritual and social life. They seek to develop a habit of experiencing others’ interpretation of events and an understanding of the world as it is and the world as it could be to further their understanding of themselves and their work. 

Teaching:

As students and practitioners of power, Metro IAF / IAF organizers are committed to sharing what they have learned from their experiences so that leaders of the organization they are building might learn from their experiences or share their own. Metro IAF / IAF organizers never do for others what they can do for themselves. 

Acting:

Metro IAF / IAF organizers are people who make things happen by the very force of their willingness to agitate leaders, hold them accountable, and challenge them to grow. They practice a “habit of action” with the purpose of cultivating a reaction, including their own and other organizers’ and leaders’ development. 

Reflecting:

Committed to their own self- understanding, growth, development and reinvention, Metro IAF / IAF organizers exhibit a commitment to thinking and reflecting on their own experiences with power and encouraging leaders to do so. 

We are committed to the recruitment, growth and retention of the next generation of Metro IAF / IAF organizers, especially people of color and people from working- class backgrounds. Metro IAF / IAF organizing is expanding in the Plains (Oklahoma, Arkansas), the Inter-Mountain West (Montana, Nevada, Colorado), Central California and the Inland Empire, the Midwest/Great Lakes (Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, West Virginia), and the South (North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Eastern Kentucky). 

Becoming a top-flight Metro IAF / IAF organizer is an ongoing apprenticeship of organizing over 10–20 years in a variety of contexts, with multiple organizer and leader, mentors, and in diverse political jurisdictions. The demand for organizers is growing rapidly as new communities seek to join the IAF network, particularly to overcome partisan gridlock and to pursue strategies addressing criminal justice reform, the racial wealth gap, climate change, and immigrant rights as well as initiatives on income inequality and family wage jobs at the local, metropolitan and state levels. 

Metro IAF / IAF organizers demonstrate and develop the following qualities: anger as evidenced by a person’s actions to confront an injustice faced in their life; a curiosity about and a willingness to relate to different kinds of people, institutions, and communities; imagination for and hunger to build power to create change; a pragmatic, non-ideological worldview that understands politics requires compromise to make change; and the ability  to embrace the tension and confrontation inherent in organizing. Additionally, organizers commit to ongoing evaluation, accountability, and mentorship from the organizers and leaders in the Metro IAF / IAF collective that have come before them. 

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