Our Work
People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) was founded by a group of welfare recipients in 1997 so that low-income people could have a space to impact the policies that affect their lives. Since that time, POWER has helped thousands of low-income people find their own voice and find ways to end poverty. Now approaching its 10th year, POWER continues to build the power of low-income people in San Francisco to improve the conditions in their communities and in their workplaces.
The backbone of POWER’s work are our two organizing projects: the Bayview Organizing Project, which unites low-income residents of San Francisco’s last-remaining African American neighborhood in a fight for affordable housing, living wage employment and environmental justice in the face of corporate developers’ attempts to gentrify the community; and the Women Workers’ Project which organizes domestic workers who are mostly immigrant and women of color to win justice in an industry that thrives on our exploitation.
All of our work revolves around a three-pronged organizing model that POWER has developed, which involves:
- Community Action Organizing: the strength of POWER’s work where low-income people come together to collectively identify and take action to resolve the problems that we experience in our communities and our workplaces;
- Leadership Development:
In order for low-income people to develop real solutions to the
problems that we face, low-income people must have the opportunity to
develop our analysis of the world around us and to hone the skills
necessary to resolve those problems. - Strategic Alliance Building: POWER places a priority on building long-standing partnerships with other grassroots organizations locally, nationally and internationally;
POWER’s model of achieving permanent change is rooted in a bottom-up strategy. The people who are most impacted by the racist, sexist and exploitative systems that we live under know what needs to be changed and have the interest to change it. We cannot wait or expect that anyone else will do it for us; we have to lead a movement of all of those willing to make real and permanent change in the world. That’s why POWER’s work is rooted in and led by low-income women and people of color.
The focus of POWER’s work is San Francisco, yet we also recognize that the problems that we face in the Bay Area are structural and are linked to the problems around the globe. It is for this reason that POWER sees our work as being directly connected to movements for justice and equality around the world.
Our Community Action Organizing work is made up of two approaches: Organize the Unorganized and Wage Strategic Campaigns.
Throughout history, oppressed and exploited peoples have built organization to increase their collective strength to make change. Everyday, POWER knocks on doors in housing projects and talks to people in parks and laundrymats, inviting them to join with other low-income people to fight for real change.
What unites all of the members in the Community Action Organizing projects is a desire to make change. POWER members make that change through Waging Strategic Campaigns. Low-income people come together to collectively identify problems and to devise solutions to those problems. In this process, low-income people become skilled community leaders, grassroots policy experts and efficient facilitators.
Currently, POWER has two Community Action Organizing projects:
Bayview Organizing Project: The Bayview Organizing Project unites low-income residents in San Francisco’s last-remaining African American neighborhood in a fight for affordable housing, living wage employment and environmental justice in the face of corporate developers’ attempts to gentrify the community
Women Worker’s Project: Currently, the Women Worker’s Project organizes Latina immigrants and women of color who work as nannies and house-cleaners in the informal domestic work industry. This project aims to fight for basic worker protections to be afforded to domestic workers, yet additionally strives to raise the standard for all low-wage workers.
In order to win the changes that we need, we need organization. But organization alone is not enough. Building power means building organization, capacity, and consciousness. This is why we must develop the leadership of those most directly affected by structural and global oppression.POWER’s educational practice is based on the principle that, as much as possible, every moment should be a learning moment. Learning does not just happen in workshops. Our leadership development work is carried out through four core methods that we have tried to learn and adapt from other popular struggles.
@ Action and Reflection
This method of raising consciousness draws from the work of Paulo Freire amongst poor Brazilians in the literacy campaigns of the 1950’s and 1960’s in that country. It is based on the idea that a central way that people develop a consciousness for struggle and liberation is by reflecting on their own life experiences and then by taking action. We put this idea into practice at POWER through prioritizing evaluation and discussion of our group’s work in collective and one-on-one spaces. This process of action and reflection can take place around any part of the group’s work— from conducting outreach to evaluating an action, carrying out a structural analysis of an issue, or taking action to try and change oppressive circumstances.
@ Observation and Participation
We take this concept from the Black Panther Party who took actions and served the people in a way that provided our communities with an example that there is an alternative to the current reality. For us, observation and participation has two parts. First, POWER is structured in such a way that members and leaders have opportunities to observe and participate in the group’s work; they are not segregated into only a small part of the organization’s work. Secondly, with POWER’s work, organizers and lead members attempt to model the politics and values that we want to see in the world. In both parts, collective action can help large groups of people to take action together, feel their collective power and witness the example of people carrying out roles like public speaking, engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, etc.
@ Political Exposure
This point refers to the need for members and leaders who are involved in POWER to be exposed to other struggles. It might be that a particular member joins POWER looking for a way to fight their boss or gentrification in their community, but the reality is that those struggles are directly connected to all other kinds of issues like the environment, police brutality, the war, immigration. We feel that it is crucial to support other groups and communities who are also in the struggle. We have seen that leaders in POWER develop a better, broader sense of the struggle and their role when we go and lend a hand to our comrades.
@ Political and Popular Education
Education at POWER is the final component of our leadership development process. In our educational work we work to create space for discussion— bringing in new information that members might not have had before and facilitating the development of collective analysis.
POWER two main tracks of education:
- Fantastic Fridays is a weekly training and discussion space that varies in its content based on the needs of the group. On any given Friday you could find us discussing the war, how to do better follow-up with members who didn’t come to the meeting, or patriarchy in the group.
- POWER University is the organization’s own school of higher education, designed to help POWER members become leaders in the organization and in the movement. The 100 Series of POWER University is a nine-week examination of POWER’s mission statement in close detail and development of members’ skills as public speakers and as organizers. The 200 Series of POWER University is a sixteen-week exploration of the root causes of poverty and oppression in a global and historical context. In addition to deepening participants’ analysis, this series sharpens members’ skills as meeting facilitators and policy analysts.
POWER’s mission statement voices our intention to end poverty and oppression— once and for all. In order for this to happen, we see that there will have to be hundreds of organizations working towards a common goal. For this reason, POWER’s organizing model places a high priority on building strong alliances to help move our campaigns forward and to strengthen the movement for economic, racial and gender justice.
Locally, POWER was one of the founding members of the May 1st Alliance for Land, Work & Power. This standing alliance was formed in 1995 to strengthen the influence and power of grassroots organizations based in San Francisco’s working class communities of color. In addition to POWER, the members of the May 1st Alliance include the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA), St. Peter’s Housing Committee and the Day Labor Program (DLP).
Nationally, POWER is a member of Grassroots Global Justice, a national alliance of grassroots groups who are organizing to build an agenda for power for working and poor people throughout the United States. Currently, POWER is helping to organize the U.S. Social Forum which will be taking place in the summer of 2007 in Atlanta, GA.
Internationally, POWER has sent delegations of staff and members to South Africa, Venezuela, Mexico, the Phillipines and Brazil to learn from and to make connections with social movements in other parts of the world. All of these experiences have helped to shaped POWER’s work and our understanding of POWER’s relationship to the world around us. In January of 2007, POWER will send a delegation to Kenya to participate in the World Social Forum. From this experience, we hope to develop stronger partnerships with organizations based in Africa to help inform our work in Black communities within the United States.
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