Community / Coalition Organizer - part-time

Help build the grassroots movement for: Disability Justice. Worker Rights. Human Need over Corporate Greed. Public Health/Education/Welfare. Better Medicaid & Medicare, progressive revenue.

Are you an experienced organizer/activist that wants to continue doing serious building of people power, but wants to work around other life responsibilities and needs a part-time option? 15-20 hours/wk. Prefer someone based in McLean or Cook County, but work is statewide.

The Alliance for Community Services is a statewide community-labor coalition led by people with disabilities, low income families, seniors, unions and community organizations promoting social, racial, disability and economic justice, with a focus on protecting and improving public sector services that meet human needs for health, education, welfare.

The Alliance brings together front-line service workers with consumers of those services to learn from each other, and take action together for the benefit of all.

Current issue priorities include:

• Organizing people with disabilities, including residents of long term care facilities (e.g. nursing homes, et al.) to win person-centered care, freedom, dignity
• Protect and improve public health (e.g. Medicaid, Medicare, mental health, long term care), public education , disability services, SNAP, including safe/healthy service offices
• Win democracy, accountability and justice for students and teachers at community colleges
• Progressive tax/revenue, fair budgets
• Fair contracts, better working conditions for workers

To build people power, organizers:

• identify and recruit persons directly affected by these issues, especially people with disabilities, seniors, rank-and-file union members, Medicaid consumers
• organize meetings and protest actions (remote and in-person)
• build campaigns by getting people more involved (doorknocking, phone calls, one-on-ones, et al)
• collect and publicize stories of persons being harmed by austerity
• engage community and union allies
• initiate/promote on-line activism
• research, build lists, fundraise, and misc support tasks (note: This is an organizing position that is mostly reaching out to and mobilizing members. Admin tasks are in support of that, not a central part of the job)

Specific schedule negotiable, but will include some evenings and weekends.

Required qualifications:

Commitment to racial/social/economic/disability justice. Courage. Strong verbal and written communication skills, facility with phone/computer technology, shared documents, email. Experience with organizing/advocacy.

Ability to: act independently, juggle multiple tasks, respectfully listen to and engage diverse constituencies, show initiative, motivate others to act on shared values, get yourself to activities/meetings throughout the state (especially McLean, Cook, Sangamon counties); recruit/engage persons of diverse abilities and backgrounds.

Preferred:

Lived experience with issues of the Alliance agenda. Three years experience with public policy, legislative campaigns or community organizing. Language other than English (including ASL). Familiar with Chicago or Illinois progressive community.

Location: Staff work primarily from home but must be based in Illinois, preferably McLean County or metro Chicago, and participate in required in-person activities. Local grassroots community outreach is a core part of the work.

A job you can believe in, changing the world with committed grassroots volunteers.

FICA. Paid time off.

Independent, flexible schedule, mostly work from home. Opportunity to play a meaningful role in the movement, with flexibility to devote to other life priorities

(N.B. some in-person activities, including regular community outreach like tabling and local community meetings are required part of the job).

A core part of the work is verbal and written communication via phone/email /zoom/googledocs / in-person.

Strong English proficiency a must. Second language (including ASL) a plus.