Honing Our Resources to Meet this Unprecedented Moment
By Jacqui Patterson, Executive Director
As TCLP approaches our anniversary on July 1st, we recognize and give thanks for the meaningful contributions so many people (communities, staff, board, allies, partners, volunteers, donors, etc.) have made to the foundation we have built. TCLP now offers databases, toolkits, multiple research publications, the Black Liberation and Just Transition Institute (BLJTI), the Just Transition Lawyering Institute, the Just Transition Municipalities Institute, and more!
TCLP prioritizes communities with a population below 4,000, whose median household income is below the poverty line, with a significant Black population, and often unincorporated. Our focus is on communities that do not have other organizations working with them already. In other words, our aim is to start with the most marginalized communities—financially, politically, and socially—and, in the words of Shirley Chisholm, we serve as the folding chair to ensure a place and power at the table of an inclusive economy and democracy.
With intensification in this moment of the loss of a safety net and other attacks, our communities are threatened by increasingly losing life, livelihood, and well-being.
Having built a foundation of resources and programming, and having engaged in over 250 communities who are eager to engage with us in their journey to self-determination and local self-reliance, we now enter the phase where we are calling on ecosystem partners at scale.
On June 1st, we will officially activate our Ecosystem Engagement Model to ensure that each community receives the requisite level of facilitation in visioning, strategizing, action planning, resourcing, and accompanied implementation.
With emphasis on faith-based entities, and civic groups, aligned movement partners, as well as allied technical assistance partners, we invite the ecosystem to join us in ensuring that the 250+ communities and counting have a seat at the table of an inclusive economy and democracy.
Over the next 12 months, together with Ecosystem Partners, TCLP will:
- Establish a 10-Person Organizing Team with concentrated interdepartmental support centering the Organizing Team work, including all-staff quarterly community visits.
- Engage 20+technical and organizing partners and allies
- Establish anchor organizations in 7 states
- Graduate 300+ Leaders from the BLJTI
- Train 300+ volunteers
- Co-host 50+ town hall meetings
- Facilitate vision-to-action plans with 100+ communities
- Work with 50+ communities to establish community-led governance/planning/coordination committees
- Support 50+ communities in securing grants
- Assist communities in establishing 100+ regenerative local economy projects including clean air and water, local food, energy efficiency/clean energy, community emergency response teams, historical preservation, arts and culture, youth leadership, and more!
All TCLP teams will deepen their orientation towards supporting the Organizing Team. Going forward, every team member, no matter where they sit in the organization, will spend at least one day per quarter in communities.
With our expanded Organizing Team, and with the bounty of the Ecosystem Engagement Model, we will serve as anchor, coordinator, and facilitator, acquiring resources, as needed, for partners to have the capacity to engage in this community-building strategy.
Together, we will effectively advance a community-driven Black Liberation and Just Transition agenda. Even as barriers are erected to concentrate power in fewer hands, we will continue to make progress towards building a truly inclusive economy and democracy.