Environmental Justice Organizer

Environmental Justice Organizer, The People’s Lobby

Are you an experienced community organizer ready to work on climate and social justice with immigrant communities around Chicagoland - especially the Western Burbs?

Or if you’re familiar with organizing in other spaces and looking for a fellowship to transition into community organizing, read more about the fellowship option below.

If you’re a courageous, determined, and committed organizer who is ready to develop grassroots leaders and a strong base of people power, we’d love to talk with you.

If you’ve got experience working with immigrant communities and are fluent in Spanish, that’s even better.

About The People’s Lobby

The People’s Lobby is a membership-driven organization devoted to organizing widespread support for public policies and candidates – including people from our communities – that put racial justice and the needs of people and the planet before the interests of big corporations and the very rich.

• We train leaders to build bases of people and power in our communities.
• We organize support for progressive legislation.
• We endorse candidates and work hard to get them elected.
• We take direct action to pressure elected officials and other powerful people to put the interests of people and the planet first.

About the Climate Justice Organizer Position

This position focuses on building The People’s Lobby’s base of poor and working class people, especially in immigrant communities and communities of color.

Responsibilities include:

Base building

• Find and meet with existing leaders and potential members across multiple communities to understand their goals and motivations and build meaningful relationships.
• Propose roles and secure commitments to participate in collaborative organizing for events, actions, and campaigns.
• Develop and manage local events that deepen and strengthen political analysis and engagement.
• Frequently contact people to drive engagement, commitment, and turnout for events, campaigns, and actions.
• Build relationships with community institutions and leaders who might be interested in organizing with us, i.e. local organizations, churches, schools, service providers, community centers and elected officials.

Issue & Electoral Campaigns

• Organize people and communicate with voters around elections.
• Organize people around implementation and defense of democracy, human rights, and TPL’s environmental justice work.
• Identify and organize around other racial and economic justice issues based on the self-interests of community leaders.

Leadership Development

• Learn the models and methodologies that The People’s Lobby uses to train and develop internal and external leaders in community organizing.
• Motivate, inspire, challenge, and guide community leaders and prospects in order to test their leadership, grow their vision of their own leadership in our organization/collective, and deepen their investment and participation.

Fundraising

• Engage core team in ongoing membership drives to bring in dues-paying members in the collar counties.
• Participate in all staff fundraisers.

Strategy and Collaboration

• Guide the development of campaigns to build membership and people power that align with the needs of our communities and members while building our base
• Continually identify goals, issues, targets, candidates, and leaders who could help accelerate our efforts
• Report on activities and collaborate on building transparency and accountability
• Participate in and organize leaders to participate in The People’s Lobby organization-wide campaigns, actions, and events

Qualifications:

• Demonstrated success in relational organizing and in working with people from diverse race, class and gender identities.
• Demonstrated success in organizing volunteers on campaigns.
• Demonstrated success using a combination of tactics (canvassing, community meetings, social media or other) to bring new people into an issue or electoral campaign or as organization members.

Additional optional qualifications:

• Fluency in Spanish
• Lived experience with immigration, social, environmental, and climate justice

Qualities Sought:

• Angry about injustice in the world and committed to effectiveness.
• Willingness to work within The People’s Lobby’s organizing methodology, including a focus on self-interest, negotiation and agitation.
• Enjoys working with people and is capable of negotiating clearly with members, coworkers and supervisor about how we do the work.
• Willingness to take risks and do things outside of personal comfort zone.
• Attentive to details, which is often the difference between an average organizer and a highly effective organizer.
• Kind, but direct. Able to give and receive feedback.

Fellowship option:

While we’d love to hire a truly experienced community organizer, we’re also open to helping the right person to develop their organizing experience.

Sometimes folks who haven’t done this kind of community organizing discover within the first 90 days that organizing in this political climate is not the right fit for them, and we understand.

The fellowship experience is structured to provide a 90 day paid work experience with no obligation to continue, but if it’s a great fit all around we’d love to continue the fellowship and/or bring you on full time.

We anticipate pay in the range of [$18-$22 per hour, 40 hours per week] but will include specifics in an offer letter after the interview process.

You’ll primarily work on turnout and campaign activities, like calling people, helping with Lobby Days, organizing events, and more - but without the responsibilities of owning your own campaigns/events.

You’ll get experience with the organizing performance metrics that help create success in the role, and have a clear picture of what it takes to win campaigns and build collective progressive power at a grassroots level.

This is a great fit for someone whose experience has been more part-time college/campus organizing, electoral campaigns, nonprofits, and/or other relevant experiences, but we’re absolutely open to considering other backgrounds with some types of organizing experiences, paid or not.

100% employer-paid health and dental plans, technology and transportation stipends, and 5% retirement contribution. The People’s Lobby offers generous paid time off, including 10 sick days per year and 10 days of paid time off for the first year of employment. The following holidays are observed by the organization: New Year's Day, Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Indigenous People's Day, and Thanksgiving Day and the following Friday. In addition to the holidays officially observed by the organization, permanent, regular employees are entitled to five (5) paid floating holidays, to be used for the observance of other civic holidays, religious holidays, or other days of personal significance. Additionally, offices will be closed for the last ten business days of each year.