Georgia Stand-Up

Co-authored by Melissa Conrad & Akudo Ejelonu

On June 27^th, after three years of preparation and anticipation, the United States Social Forum (USSF) took the city of Atlanta by storm.  Over 10,000 community leaders, activists, organizers, professionals, concerned citizens, youths, elders, adults, and people from diverse backgrounds gathered for four days to share ideas, resources, learn, and challenge each other to realize the dream of making “another world possible and another U.S. necessary.”  While passions stirred on issues ranging from the genocide in Sudan to the undemocratic rebuilding plan of the GulfCoast, the question on the minds of the thousands who gathered was how to build a new movement in this country that addresses all of the social injustices that many minority and marginalized communities in the U.S. face.

In preparation for this monumental event, Georgia Stand-Up saw the opportunity to come together with local and national partners to utilize the USSF to shed light on many of the regional issues happening here in Atlanta, to propose effective solutions for those challenges, and begin building a bridge of understanding around those issues. 

During the forum, Stand-Up joined forces with various local and national organizations such as the AFL-CIO, Project South, the Atlanta Martin Luther King, Jr. March Committee, the Taskforce for the Homeless, and Jobs with Justice to plan the opening USSF march.  Stand-Up also facilitated a workshop on the topic of “Community Benefits Agreements: Accessing Community Power to Impact Development” explaining the basic concepts of community benefits agreements as well as highlighting the work of the Partnership for Working Families to spread the movement for working families to major metropolitan areas across the country.

The goal of the USSF march was to set the tone for the entire forum, build solidarity among the diverse constituents represented, and address the issues that many communities face not only in Atlanta, but nationally and globally.  Stand-Up played a crucial leadership role in march planning through the recruitment and training of 120 marshals, providing technical support in the march planning, and assisting with negotiations between the city and the USSF March Committee to devise an effective route highlighting keys areas of the local struggle for justice around transportation, workers rights, and the need for open and transparent economic development that address the real needs of the community.  Over 4,000 delegates participated in the march.

While the march played a key role in raising awareness on many of the issues facing Atlanta’s communities, the workshops at the USSF were designed to further that awareness, create a vision for change, and bring to light solutions and tools to achieve those visions.  The CBA workshop presented by Stand-Up addressed the core principles of community benefits campaigns along with the skills and steps needed for winning campaigns.  The workshop engaged over 50 participants in a two-hour session that broke down the basic concepts of a CBA, as well as dealt with many of the technical aspects related to building a strategic coalition and conducting grassroots organizing campaigns. 

The workshop highlighted successful CBA campaigns from Partnership organizations around the country to illustrate the adaptability of CBAs in a variety of unique political, geographic, and economic dynamics.  The workshop participants were not only diverse in race/ethnicity, age, occupation, but also had a variety of levels of knowledge and experience with the community benefits model.  In turn, the workshop became a dialogue and strategy session where Stand-Up staff not only provided information, but also shared in the lessons learned.  Ultimately, the workshop was a success as it allowed several participants to really begin the process of forming a strategy around how to push for real change in their own communities based on the community benefits model.

As W.E. B. Dubois once said, “As the South goes, so goes the nation.”  Getting a real commitment to support the local grassroots organizing that is taking place in Atlanta and across the Southis one area where Stand-Up is paying close attention.  By creating fresh and innovate perspectives on how to effectively organize our communities, better analyze the power struggles behind the issues we face, and develop better strategies on how communities can build power to create real social change here in the Atlanta region, we continue the work of building a real movement for social justice across the country.  This will bring us one step closer to staying true to the mission and vision of the USSF. 

“See you in 2010” was the closing remark for the U.S. Social Forum.  Now the call is to take the knowledge gained through conversations and workshops during the forum in order to develop real solutions and strategies for change in communities across the U.S.  The real question becomes, “what will we have accomplished the next time I see you in 2010?”