Missouri Jobs With Justice organized a Lobby Day on January 30th to urge lawmakers to protect direct democracy and ensure voting is free, fair and accessible to all.
In an effort to build the Organizing Revival in Missouri, MOJwJ has also launched a new field program to expand their base and to turn activist voters into volunteers who are ready to take action.
MOJwJ will be addressing this through intensive deep canvassing programs with rigorous followup that builds the organizational capacity for moving people from passive action (signing a commitment card) and into increased capacity as seen in number of people filling canvassing and phone shifts, owning local campaign development, and doing strategic solidary work.
The field program is focused on shifting the organization’s capacities from those of mobilizing to deep organizing. The field organizers’ role focuses on outreach and leadership cultivation to then pass the relationships onto regional organizers who run organizing committees.
Through the program, MOJWJ will reach out to working-class voters, who share many of Missouri Jobs with Justice’s core values on economic justice issues but who are also somewhat susceptible to the rhetoric of right-wing populism.
MOJwJ believes that reorienting towards a politics rooted in multiracial solidarity and mutual thriving takes more than mere persuasion around immediate electoral outcomes; it takes deep conversations, genuine listening, discipline leadership development, frank discourse that centers race and difference, and, ultimately the building of deep relationships and trust of JWJ as a political home, where people of all backgrounds can work together towards creating a democracy and economy that work for all of us.
