Congregation Based Community Organizing (CBCO)
The Emanu-El Local Organizing Committee
Your Fellow Congregants - Our Local Organizing Committee. See these smiling faces - one of them may be calling on you to help!
CBCO transforms religious communities into centers of civic power that are capable of acting on the values of faith, justice and compassion. Through listening, relationship building, and leadership development, our congregants can join together to act on issues that impact families in our community and our city.
GET INVOLVED!
* Join our Local Organizing Community
* Host a house party
* Ask us to contact you to add your voice.
Contact Social Justice Coordinator Sandy Rechschaffen: sandyr@emanuelsf.org
Back Row: Stuart Oppenheim, Ben Walter, Luis Yaquin, Dovid Coplon, Diane Winer, Howard Winer, Liza Cherney Front Row: Marly Goldblatt, Barbara Lowenstein, Martina Knee, Terri Forman, Vianna Newman (On LOC not in photo: Brooke Agee, Vicki Buder, Marcy Scott Lynn, Alan Scher, Hillary Wollin). Staff: Rabbi Sydney Mintz, Abra Greenspan, Terry Kraus and Sandy Rechtschaffen.
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What Kind of a Member Are You?
Are we a Kehilat Chesed, a community that builds relationships and personal connections for its members? Is there a constituency among us that remains on the ‘outside?’
Congregation-Based Community Organizing (CBCO) is about creating change inside our faith institutions so that we can create effective change outside in our communities. The fundamental idea behind CBCO is that power rests in relationship — when we take intentional time to build relationships and leadership among members of our community, we are more able to speak with one voice in the public sphere. The process of CBCO begins by creating different kinds of relationships with each other — relationships where we know each other’s stories, hopes, and fears; relationships in which we build one another’s leadership and hold each other accountable; relationships in which we help each other feel powerful and hopeful. That power, in turn, has the potential to change almost any issue in the outside world.
When members of our communities are faced with personal or public pain, we often turn to our synagogues. What would happen if we started by asking each other why we come to synagogue? Or, what is our collective obligation as synagogue members to not only help each other personally make sense of the world, but also to provide meaningful, powerful, effective ways of improving it?
Organizing is hard work: harnessing the powerful voices of our institutions can bring us closer to creating the change that we want to see in the world. When a congregation decides to start organizing, they work with a local organizing group that helps them do a process of listening and relationship-building within the congregation, identifying key and common issues, and then taking public action towards making change around those issues. Synagogues have used this process to strengthen their congregations while also making concrete changes in their communities such as expanding access to health care, improving local schools and pushing for environmental programs. We will be working with a local organization called the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP), a member of the People Improving Communities (PICO) National Network. We are hoping that through our organizing work, we will be able to pull congregants into more active relationships with the community, and attract and retain new members as well as begin some engaging and meaningful justice work that reflects our collective commitment to making our community a better place for all.
Where can you find out more about Emanu-El’s initiative? Contact Sandy Rechtschaffen, Coordinator of Emanu-El’s Social Justice Programs, at:
sandyr@emanuelsf.org
- Download The CBCO Timeline
- Download an article by Erika Katske, the Associate Director of the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP), and member of the PICO National Network.
Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
for Synagogue Leaders Starting CBCO
What is CBCO? Congregation-Based Community Organizing (or CBCO) is a model of community organizing that builds relationships and leadership inside faith institutions and helps the institution have an effective voice for social justice in the public sphere. CBCO is helping synagogues, churches and schools all over the country engage their members in effective change-making work that complements their service inititatives.
Why do faith institutions start organizing? For many and multiple reasons. Some want to do effective social justice work that targets systemic issues, the root causes of poverty and injustice; others have an immediate issue and want support developing a strategy and campaign; still others want to build their internal leadership and community.
What is Emanu-El hoping to get out of this initiative? Many of the things listed above:
• At Emanu-El, 45 percent of the members are new in the last 5 years and few are involved in the community in a regular way; part of the goal of this initiative is to help bring members into relationship with one another, creating a more connected community that is more involved in day-to-day life at the synagogue.
• Many of the issues that CBCO organizations tackle affect the members of Emanu-El – many members have left the congregation (and San Francisco) because of housing prices and trouble finding a quality the public school. Other members are unable to participate regularly in congregational events because they lack reliable public transportation. CBCO will allow members of Emanu-El to take on these issues in a way that improves the quality of life for all San Franciscans.
• Many members of Emanu-El would like to see the congregation use its clout effectively towards citywide change. CBCO gives us a method to do just that.
What do you mean by “systemic change,” and isn’t that too ambitious? CBCO teaches congregations to take on “problems” one “issue” at a time. For example, many congregations have identified “poor public education” as a problem that many of their congregants care about. Few believe that anyone can change the state of our schools, but through organizing, leaders learn to chip away at the larger problem by identifying smaller, winnable campaigns (i.e. reforming the public school placement process, fighting for increased funding for special education, increasing the budget autonomy of district schools, etc) that build up to profound change for children in public schools. In this way, leaders in congregations create systemic change over years of using the CBCO model.
What’s involved in CBCO? CBCO is a circular model with four primary phases: listening; research; action; reflection. Each congregation starts with a “listening campaign” focused on building relationships within the congregation and identifying key issues that affect members. Leaders then work with an organizer on a process of research to clarify the issue and identify possible solutions. The process culminates in a community action in which the congregations comes together in a large, town-hall-style gathering with officials. Officials are asked to commit to changes that leaders have identified in the research process. At the end, and throughout, the process, key congregational leaders engage in reflective practice that helps them hone their organizing skills, assess their campaign strategy and grow as community leaders.
How long does the process take? Typically, congregations take about 1 year to do the listening and research phases and to prepare for their first action. Depending on the issue that they identify, the process could take slightly more or less time. However, congregations engage in CBCO for many years. The CBCO model is a circle, so after reflecting on their first action, congregational leaders go back to listening and identifying a new issue.
How do faith institutions learn how to start a CBCO initiative? Faith institutions usually become members of a local network of congregations who are working independently and together to improve the quality of life in their city or county. Joining a local organization gives congregations: access to a trained organizer that works closely with lay leaders and clergy; training on a proven model of organizing; connection to other synagogues, churches and schools with similar issues; local, state and national training opportunities. In San Francisco, congregations become members of the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP), an affiliate of the PICO National Network (www.piconetwork.org).
We already have a strong community service program. Why would we get involved in SFOP? While service programs are sometimes complementary to organizing, the two do very different work. Organizing is about building power to change the root causes of injustice. Service is about meeting people’s immediate needs. Both are necessary and required according to Jewish tradition, but most faith institutions do only service programs. Most of our institutions have service programs in addition to their organizing.
What happens after we join? Each member congregation of SFOP forms a Local Organizing Committee (LOC), a group of leaders and clergy who guide the organizing process in the community. The LOC works through the organizing process with the help of the organizer to identify and train leaders, select issues and hold community actions.
What kinds of issues do members work on? Issues rise from the concerns of the members of the community and reflect their values and direct experiences. Some issues are very local (getting a stop light on a dangerous corner or preventing a local after-school program from closing); others are broader and require longer campaigns (expanding health insurance to uninsured residents or reforming the public education system). Locally, SFOP members have worked on issues related to healthcare, housing, violence prevention, immigration and education.
How will our community decide on an issue? A new LOC’s first endeavor is to launch a listening campaign within the institution to build relationships and identify problems members care about and that affect them. Using a process of research, reporting back to the congregation and collective decision-making, the problem is narrowed to a specific issue on which members can take action.
How will we relate to other congregations within SFOP? Affiliates hold citywide/regional meetings and retreats so that members of different institutions can report on their work, build relationships across institutions and build larger campaigns on shared issues.
Is PICO just a Bay Area network? PICO is a national network made up of more than 50 organizations in 17 states (with a growing international effort in Central America and Africa). PICO organizations are connected through statewide and national work, focused mostly on healthcare, housing, education and immigration. The PICO CA Project is comprised of the 20 PICO organizations in CA. The PICO New Voices Campaign brings nationwide leaders together on federal issues.
Where can I find out more about Emanu-El’s initiative? Contact Sandy Rechtschaffen, Director of Emanu-El’s Social Justice Programs (sandyr@emanuelsf.org).
San Francisco Organizing Project
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