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Helping people and communities develop the tools to shape their own futures has long been a focus of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The following edited transcript is from one of seven videos by Mott in which those working in the field of community organizing reflect on the lessons, opportunities and challenges for creating lasting social change.

Question: What motivates you and keeps you excited about your career in organizing?

Jack McKay 
Food AND Medicine
Brewer, Maine

On a personal level, participation in community organizing makes me feel good in a very fundamental way. It makes me feel human. Connecting and being real with other people, and helping to create a situation where their humanness can come out is an incredible blessing. It’s also very fascinating to think of the factors, the circumstances and the contexts that people are in, to see what it’s like to walk in their shoes and help change that environment so that they can become more human, so that they can become more real. It’s helping to give them the tools so that they can do it themselves and then empower other people, because that’s how you create a movement. I’m part of my community, I’m organizing within my community and that’s a really fun, challenging and interesting place to be. I really enjoy it.


Corderrius Stevenson 
Citizens for a Better Greenville
Greenville, Mississippi

Before doing this, I was the type of person who wouldn’t speak out, who wouldn’t tell my opinion about things. I would get ran over, looked over, laughed at. But since I’ve been in organizing, I’ve become more outspoken and I can tell people what everybody else is feeling, about what the people want to hear. It’s just really changed me. That feeling you have when you know that you’re on the right side and the expression on people’s faces when they see you marching for a better cause, giving them a chance and giving them hope. And we need more people to come into organizing, because there’s strength in numbers and, in the end, we’re going to be able to make change, a great change.
 

Leone Jose Bicchieri 
Chicago Workers' Collaborative
Chicago, Illinois

We bring a type of organizing that comes from an analysis of who really has power in the community and who doesn’t, and is that fair and how do we get it to be more equal? That’s what I love about it. I think organizing is natural in the sense of the activist organizer. It’s like sitting on the playground where some people are bullies, some aren’t. The playgrounds that are a little more successful are the ones where maybe 10 or 12 of the kids get together and say, “Hey, you two. You’re not going to play ball with us anymore unless you stop hitting and punching people.” It’s kind of a natural calling for a lot of us. Maybe we don’t like the way the community is currently organized and if we help people to bring out their skills, their abilities and the things they can contribute to society, then the community can lift itself up, both economically and otherwise.