Cooperation DC Organizer

About ONE DC:

Since our founding in 2006, Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE) DC has worked tirelessly to advance racial and economic equity in the District by fighting economic disenfranchisement among Black working-class communities in DC. ONE DC builds multi-racial and cross-class solidarity, but we focus our efforts in the majority Black, working class communities in Wards 5, 6, 7 and 8. We build community power through grassroots organizing, leadership development of members, advancing social entrepreneurship and alternative economic models, collective use of resources, and coalition-building in the primary areas of housing, employment, and income inequality.

As a Black-led non-profit, we take seriously the need to bring members of the community that we serve into decision-making and leadership roles. The members of our shared leadership team have lived experience with the structural inequalities that we work to address, and this experience guides our direction and informs the work that we do. Our commitment to building economic independence and community power within communities of color in DC shows up clearly in the decisions we make about how to shape our programming and where to direct our resources.

As a Black and working class-led organization, ONE DC has recently achieved a number of internal and external victories to build our political strength to win racial and economic equity in the District. In 2018, ONE DC purchased the United Black Fund building and spent the last three years renovating it to become the country’s first debt-free Black Workers Center, where ONE DC members and other workers convene to build worker power through cooperative incubation, community work, and political education. As a community steward, ONE DC plans to use our Black Workers and Wellness Center as a hub for movement-building work and community partnership. In 2020, ONE DC co-founded a citywide organizing partnership to cancel rent for workers who lost their jobs during the country’s first global pandemic in a century. In 2021, ONE DC began its work to strengthen the city’s tenant union community. Now, in over five buildings working with tenant leaders, ONE DC encourages these tenant associations to join the Right to the City, a national network of tenant activism.

Organizationally, ONE DC has practiced a non-traditional governance structure called shared leadership. ONE DC’s volunteer directors on the Shared Leadership Team, work with ONE DC’s staff to steward and govern its resources and organizational priorities through sub-committees. In 2022, ONE DC’s SLT decided to introduce a management team structure to strengthen our human resources operations, and the financial management. The management team, composed of the Director of Operations (Operations Lead) and the Director of Organizing (Lead Organizer), will strategize staff activities with the SLT, work with ONE DC’s Personnel Committee on staff management, and provide day-to-day staff supervision.

ONE DC’s Cooperation DC Organizer:

This is a full-time position for 40 hours per week.

Background: ONE DC’s Black Workers and Wellness Center (BWWC) is a member-led space that builds racial and economic justice through popular education, direct action and worker-owned alternatives. It is a center for finding and creating positive, dignified Black work and training. It’s an incubation space for alternatives to low-wage work, such as worker cooperatives, collectives, and small businesses created, owned, and operated by Black workers. The BWWC provides a place to openly discuss the intersection of race and work, particularly what it means to be "working while Black." The BWWC creates an environment to challenge bad employers who exploit, cheat, & steal from their workers; and an educational space to talk about and create ways to provide safe, high quality, dignified work in DC.

ONE DC’s Cooperation DC is a member-led initiative within the Black Workers and Wellness Center, a project of ONE DC. It exists to expand dignified employment opportunities for low-income DC residents through the development of cooperatives, especially worker co-op (businesses owned and managed by their employees) and housing co-ops. Cooperation DC coordinates city-wide efforts for worker co-op development, including cooperative economics popular education and co-op advocacy. Our vision is a city and world where all workers – especially those of us who have been most marginalized by our current economy – reap the benefits of our labor. Through this we will have a meaningful voice in the workplace, and apply those democratic practices to other areas of our lives.

Three principles/priorities drive the work of ONE DC's employees:

• Community organizing based on ONE DC’s Mission, values, policy objectives, and Strategic Plan utilizing campaign-specific organizing and outreach, using popular education methods to develop resident leadership, and direct action to achieve our goals;
• Base building, especially with long-term DC residents of color, and membership development;
• Developing structural alternatives (alternative economic and ownership strategies).

ONE DC expects staff and member leaders to embrace learning, exert leadership, take responsibility and show maturity in relationships with ONE DC, fellow employees, members and the SLT. A ONE DC Community Organizer must be committed to ONE DC’s political and economic vision and agenda and be comfortable working in a democratic and accountable manner with its entire staff.

Requirements:

●  One year or more of demonstrated direct organizing/base building experience and/or training/education that provides similar skills; and Willingness to learn about and commit to ONE DC’s organizing model.

●     Familiarity with cooperatively run businesses, the international co-op principles, and community-based economic development and/or the solidarity economy movement.

●     Ability to build unity and motivate others to action.

●     Good written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills; and strong computer, internet, and social media skills.

●     Self-motivated with the ability to work as part of a team.

●     A mature and reflective professional practice allowing for honest, constructive, mindful, and compassionate self-evaluation and peer-to-peer evaluations.

●     Willingness to follow and be accountable to Shared Leadership protocols and procedures.

●     Must be a resident in the DMV area, DC residents are strongly encouraged to apply and given preference.

●     Must be willing to commit to at least a 2 year involvement in ONE DC.

●     Knowledge of DC communities, history, issues, and organizations.

●     Willingness and ability to work with diverse community residents, particularly low-income residents, to overcome barriers to developing their strength as a community.

●     Flexible hours, including a willingness to work evenings and weekends.

Cooperation DC Organizer’s Specific Responsibilities Include:

ONE DC’s Cooperation DC Organizer will coordinate and continue building a citywide base of DC residents who develop and support alternative economic strategies including worker co-ops and housing co-ops, and champion the rights of Black workers and other low-income workers of color in DC. This co-op organizer’s main priorities will be to coordinate Cooperation DC. This includes providing and facilitating cooperative economics popular education and advocacy, especially to develop worker co-ops. They will implement popular education and organizing strategies to achieve community-controlled development, living wage jobs, local hiring policies, and worker cooperatives in DC. They will work with metro-DC co-op stakeholders and other local co-op coalitions and campaigns; and help to coordinate ONE DC’s Healthy Workers Collective project.

Specific Co-op Organizer Job Duties:

• Take a lead role in building an effective organizing team with the other ONE DC organizers, with resident leaders, other staff, and members of Cooperation DC and the Healthy Workers’ Collective. And be an active member of ONE DC’s Organizing and Coalition Building Committee.
• Coordinate ONE DC’s Cooperation DC by facilitating political/ cooperative economics education and business development activities and strategies; and being a liaison with the cooperative movement in DC and nationally, especially the DC Co-op Stakeholders groups and the DC Community Wealth Building Coalition, and the national worker co-op movement.
• Re-establish and work with the Cooperation DC Advisory Committee.
• Collaboratively plan Cooperation DC’s general body meetings and joint meetings with other ONE DC member meetings and campaign meetings.
• Assist in the planning and implementation of ONE DC Cooperation DC events and media coverage for Cooperation DC.
• Coordinate  monthly Healthy Worker’s Collective meetings, and support the Healthy Worker’s Collective.
• Be a member of the DC Solidarity Economy Loan Fund, including participation in national Peer Network trainings and meetings.
• Initiate and advocate policy focused on developing worker co-ops, housing co-ops, and promoting cooperative development in general in DC.
• Coordinate and facilitate technical assistance for co-op business development, especially worker co-ops and housing co-ops.
• Build coalitions with a broad base of partner organizations to achieve citywide Black Workers Center and ONE DC co-op policy goals, particularly for worker co-op development.

ONE DC’s

Cooperation DC Organizer’s Responsibilities as a ONE DC community organizer

include:  ONE DC’s Community Organizers are responsible for coordinating weekly outreach goals and outreach strategy, membership recruitment, leadership development, one-on-one’s, and coalition building activities:

●     Conduct 5-15 hours of outreach per week, including door-knocking, with Right to Income and Right to Housing members and other primary members.

●     Conduct at least five weekly one-on-one’s with ONE DC recruits representative of our organization’s base- primarily long-time, low-income Washingtonians of color.

●     Host monthly Outreach Days with ONE DC’s base.

●     Perform organizing campaign-related administrative tasks as needed and appropriate to sustaining the organization.

●     Attend regular staff meetings, Shared Leadership Team meetings, and other campaign-related sessions, etc.

ONE DC organizers are part of a team cultivating a broad base of advocates led by and centering on long-time, low-income members of the Black community in DC (the Douglass Commonwealth). They will advance the mission of ONE DC. These leaders, with the right to income organizers and other ONE DC organizers and members, will work to deepen our membership’s political analysis, and build alternative community-driven economic initiatives. A ONE DC organizer must be collaborative and willing to build a movement that is multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-gender, and multi-class; must be committed to building a solidarity economy and solidarity economics principles and values; and must be committed to building power with long-time low-income members of the Black community in DC.

Desired Skills:

1.    Bilingual speakers are welcome; Proficiency in written and conversational

Spanish strongly preferred;

2.    Strong research skills;

3.    Ability to see the broad picture and have an eye

for detail;

4.    Creativity and sense of humor;

5.    A desire to deepen political analysis and

knowledge about cooperative economics, community development finance, fair

labor practices and policies, and equitable community development.

This position is supervised by ONE DC’s staff management team, with the immediate supervisor being ONE DC’s Lead Organizer. ONE DC’s Personnel Committee is responsible for recommending hiring and firing of employees to the Directors of the SLT; and for handling employee issues and infractions as prescribed in ONE DC’s Employee Handbook.

The salary for this full-time position will range from $50,000 -55,000 based on experience. ONE DC offers a generous salary and benefits package. ONE DC is strongly committed to staff development and training. This is an opportunity for an individual to build meaningful relationships with grassroots communities and to be a part of real, concrete social change. People of color, women, LGBTQ and bilingual applicants are strongly encouraged to apply.

Visit www.onedconline.org/jobs for more

information.

To Apply:

Please submit resume and cover letter (including salary expectations)

electronically to onedcjob@gmail.com. Applications will be accepted until the

position is filled.