Here in the land of the Wabanaki (Maine) this time of year, when the greens and yellows of the late summer give way to golds and browns of late fall, feels like a time for preparing. In rural Maine, it’s a time of planting garlic, wintering beds and wood stacking before the hard frost comes. It’s felt restorative to tend to these things and I hope all reading this have what they need in this season, including rest.

This is a season for listening for what needs tending to; a time for tending to what matters as the environment around us changes. A time of year that makes me think about who and what are more exposed to the elements, and how we’re attending to our collective needs and rights.

This is a time for tending to those things that matter, as the world around us shifts in ways beyond our control. 

In the face of cruelty at the national level we’re witnessing, experiencing, supporting and hearing about efforts of profound care locally. Immense care. 

This year’s Giving Project donor organizing cohort is an example of profound collective responsibility and care: twenty-one dedicated community members meeting on weekends in person over six-months to build relationships, raise funds and make grants to resource community organizing in Maine. Please support this effort!

Where are you witnessing, experiencing, supporting and hearing about organized efforts of care?

Yesterday, we gathered with good people from Giving Project grantee organizations and members of this year’s and last year’s donor organizing cohorts to hear from those leading community organizing efforts across the state. If you aren’t supporting these organizations directly, now is the time.

JustME for JustUS
Niweskok: From the Stars to Seeds
Out in the Open
Portland Outright
Presente! Maine
Southern Maine Workers Center

Leaders from these organizations shared about their work. We heard from people who are impacted by systems and institutions designed to extract, exploit, and oppress. These organizers are motivated by their personal and social experience to enact care through their work and lives, building the capacities of others to do so as well, toward our collective liberation.

When we listen to leaders of the grantees organizations of the Giving Project, we hear about their coordinated systems of interpersonal and collective care. These are groups that are, and have been working, to build community and power with and between some of the most targeted communities in this moment, and historically, in this country.

We know that community organizing is needed right now, organizing with a blocking and building strategy on the national level, for example. Organizing that blocks the rolling back of rights and resources; organizing that builds a united front and building what we need to get through this time and beyond. On the local level,  community organizing means bringing affected people together to use their collective power to win improvements in their community and change the power structure to advance social justice. 

Where else are you seeing care being distributed, community being supported, and people being organized? Please share the Giving Project Funding Opportunity Announcement with organizations doing that work. 

The organizations we support at Maine Initiatives have been tending to what matters, amidst transformation beyond our control.

We’re learning from this work.How do we intervene on systems, the root causes, through our work? We believe that we must resource the community-based efforts we need for our collective thriving.

We tend to what’s needed, together. Join us in this tending and care. Give to support this year’s fundraising efforts.

With care and in solidarity,
Julian Rowand

“Everything worthwhile is done with other people.” – Mariame Kaba, a saying of her father, Moussa Kaba

Image credit: From Block and Build 2.0