Moira Bowman: The best way to protect democracy is to practice democracy.
The most powerful force we have to secure inclusive democracy lies within our own communities, in the collective power and leadership of the people we serve.
Housekeeping
Rich Vial has a post coming out this afternoon!
Look forward to pieces from Cyreena Boston Ashby, John Horvick, and Brenda Smith.
Kudos to Jim Moore — his Oregon Way piece got picked up by KATU and MSN.
Like what we’re doing? Consider switching to a paid subscription plan to help us spread the word and lay the foundation for supporting new contributors.
Catch up on Rediscovering the Oregon Way — chapter three is here.
Now to the post!
A leader in state and national civic engagement efforts for nearly three decades, Moira Bowman currently serves the Director of Advocacy & Organizing at Oregon Food Bank.
From Salem to Olympia, to Washington, D.C., our democratic institutions and processes are under attack. White nationalism and anti-democratic violence are on the rise. The safety and well-being of our communities are truly at risk. So I write today with a call to action for colleagues in the social services sector. Because the best way to protect democracy is to practice democracy — and there is critical work ahead that we are uniquely qualified to do.
The most powerful force we have to secure inclusive democracy lies within our own communities, in the collective power and leadership of the people we serve. All of us in social service settings — and the nonprofit sector overall — have an important role to play to meaningfully engage our communities and promote action in support of healthy democratic institutions. This means everyone, specifically nonprofits that have not previously seen civic engagement as key to their mission or vision. With so much at stake, there’s no room or time to sit on the sidelines.
I say this with the full recognition that my own organization, Oregon Food Bank (OFB), may not have fully understood the critical importance of civic engagement just a few years ago. Though we’ve long pursued a wide-ranging mission to end hunger and its root causes, our advocacy and engagement efforts were often limited to lobbying professionals talking to electeds on behalf of people experiencing hunger and in service to the emergency food system.
Today, we have a much more holistic understanding of what it will take to end hunger for good — and we’ve invested the time and resources needed to meaningfully engage with and deepen relationships in our communities.
In the past few months alone, Oregon Food Bank worked with more than 100 leaders from immigrant and refugee communities, all of whom were trying to solve food insecurity for their families and communities. Where training was needed on how certain elected positions influence hunger policy, we provided it. And we provided tools and financial resources to community leaders to support their voter registration, education, and turnout efforts.
A couple stories — not to self-promote Oregon Food Bank — but to provide concrete examples of what practicing democracy while providing services can look like.
Utilizing a project grant from OFB, the Oregon Coalition of African Community Leaders resourced 40 community leaders to lead electoral engagement. Together we trained 40 new community leaders and they in turn had one on one conversations — socially distanced — with 800 community members as they also provided emergency food support.
The Coalition understands the work of the election as just the beginning of seamless integration of service and organizing in support of their community. In the words of one of the leaders, “We don’t want to look like a pin thrown in the oceans, we’ve joined hands, we’ve come together here. Always, when people come together, they come together with a reason. Let this be the beginning of the movement - we want to be part of the movement.”
In collaboration with Familias en Acción, we trained 47 Latinx leaders. One strategy they implemented was voter registration and education at Free Food Markets that they have been leading in partnership with OFB throughout the pandemic.
Through the election cycle these leaders spoke one on one with more than a 1,000 community members. For this group of mostly women leaders, the Multnomah County Universal Pre-K measure was a critical pathway for increasing stability and food security for their families and the victory of that measure is something they can now claim for their communities.
I recognize that some nonprofit leaders might say “Great stories...it sounds like mission creep.” But this is exactly the conversation we need to have! Because here’s the thing: inclusive democracy is a necessary ingredient to achieving our service missions — and we can’t achieve, let alone protect inclusive democracy without civic engagement.
Take food insecurity, for instance. Of course, the work anti-hunger organizations are engaged in each day to deliver nutritious food to hard-hit communities is incredibly important. But we know we can’t ‘feed our way out’ of the crises we face; we need systemic change to prevent hunger from happening in the first place. That change takes place at ballot boxes, in statehouses and in the halls of Congress, where we can collectively influence policies that will benefit our communities.
Every anti-democratic effort to deny access to elections, every white nationalist attempt to violently shut down government processes blocks this avenue of change from the people bearing the brunt of the pandemic, the recession, and racial inequities. And so we practice democracy: we engage locally, we build regional networks, and we speak out and take action at the state and national levels. And it works.
I’ve heard a fellow service provider or two question: “Aren’t there organizations better equipped to do this than us? Shouldn’t we focus on providing excellent service and leave the civic engagement to others?”
The answer to this question is what brought me to Oregon Food Bank and what is no doubt true for so many other service providers: consider your reach, the people you work with each year. For the Oregon Food Bank Network, that was 860,000+ people, pre-pandemic. That’s 860,000+ people for whom the current system is not working, SNAP (formally called food stamps) dollars don’t stretch far enough, health insurance doesn’t cut it, housing is too expensive, and wages are too low. And each of them not only has a stake in the policies and systems that drive hunger and poverty; each has the lived experience and expertise needed to provide leadership in our efforts to end hunger.
Can we build out this organizing model to practice democracy at scale? I’m not yet sure. But we’re experimenting as fast as we can, exploring community-led initiatives that integrate service provision and community organizing in communities across the state. What I can say for certain is there is real opportunity in offering year-round civic engagement opportunities that shorten the distance between decision-makers and communities that are impacted by their actions. And there is real urgency to take action to confront white nationalism and anti-democratic violence wherever it occurs.
Which brings us back to the importance of this moment for all of us — and the services, missions, and institutions that hang in the balance. What have you tried? What’s worked out well for you? What do you want to try? Let’s figure out together how we can best protect and practice democracy.
***********************************
Keep the conversation going:
Facebook (facebook.com/oregonway)
Twitter (@the_oregon_way)
Check out our podcast:
#127