Evaluation of Base-building Community Organizers

Written by MOSHE BEN ASHER & KHULDA BAT SARAH

 A Tool with Nuts & Bolts for the Job (PART II)

DESIRABLE PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS

 

We define performance characteristics here as desirable because their mastery fulfills many of the requirements for promotion to lead organizer. In addition to the abilities noted above, these include the know-how to build teams and healthy team culture, to plan and supervise major actions, campaigns, and negotiations, to educate and train other organizers, and to conduct in-depth evaluations of performance. Withal, a lead organizer must have a strong sense of personal responsibility for the outcomes of the organizing.

 

S/he is self-initiating and directing:

 

A competent lead organizer adds little to the supervision overhead costs of a project. Given an assignment—say, a voter registration drive—a lead organizer shows uncommon initiative and judgment in planning, carryingout, and evaluating the campaign.

A lead organizer is self-reliant and largely self-directing but nevertheless reports weekly plans and outcomes to the project’s senior staff and leaders, and proactively seeks the feedback and support of other staff, leaders, trainers, and consultants.

An effective lead organizer deserves much of the credit for the success of the organizing, but the best of these professionals credit everyone else for their organization’s accomplishments, downplaying their own importance as they praise others who are growing into leadership roles through their mentoring.

 

S/he thinks and acts strategically:

 

A lead organizer makes thinking and acting strategically habitual. It’s not an occasional activity but an internalized inclination to continuously assess the resources of one’s own organization and others in the action field, focusing on their clarity of mission, their ideologies and definitions of reality, their depth of broad-based, experienced leadership, their allies and opponents, their numbers of mobilized members in past actions, their turnover of staff, their swelling or waning of budget, and their ability to wage increasingly far-reaching campaigns.

When considering actions and campaigns, the strategically minded lead organizer looks to reliable sources of intelligence and information about potentially targeted decision-makers, recognizing the danger of contingency confusion in the absence of I & I—that is, drawing mistaken conclusions about the contingencies of opponents’ behavior, and, consequently, reaching mistaken conclusions about their strength or weakness.

The strategic-thinking lead organizer, calculating from solid evidence, isn’t sidetracked by ideological rhetoric or the claimed power of political, economic, or social theory or philosophy.

 

S/he sets and meets goals:

 

While the leaders and members of our organizations have their roles in setting and meeting overall organization goals, lead organizers, assigned tasks as professionals, such as an organizing drive in a neighborhood or an issue campaign that brings together multiple faith communities, must map out all the necessary aspects of their assignments and then set and meet their own daily, weekly, and monthly goals.

This is not a solo responsibility. In a well-managed organizing project, staff meetings at the beginning of every week will review each organizer’s plans for the week, and at the end of every week will review the outcomes of those plans. Even though in a physical sense a lead organizer may be working independently, the planning for and evaluation of the organizer’s work becomes a team effort, drawing on the experience and know-how of the entire staff.

No small part of successfully meeting the goals we set for ourselves involves our level of inspiration, faith and hope. Whatever a lead organizer’s other resources might be, the support, encouragement, and esprit de corps of building a well-oiled organizing team that’s working to empower the powerless can play a significant role in maintaining morale.

 

S/he creatively develops and uses action tactics:

 

Lead organizers teach the tactical rules: Always go outside the experience of your opponents and always stay within the experience of your members and constituency. Both of these rules were used effectively by a neighborhood group fighting to keep their elementary school open, in response to their Board of Education’s plan to “economize” by closing it. The parents, along with other residents from their neighborhood who valued the school as a community center, had convinced the Board to have one of their committees hold an evening public meeting at the school to hear testimony for and against the closure.

I was asked to meet with the parents to help them organize to save their school. In our first meeting, the parents said they were sure that the Board would ignore the majority public opinion against closure at the public meeting and, nonetheless, publicize the claim that they had listened to both sides and decided that closure would be in the “overall public interest”—because the Board had already released a report recommending closure. My role was to raise questions that would encourage them to consider strategic and tactical options. They decided their best hope to throw a monkey-wrench into the Board’s anticipated decision was to turn out the media in large numbers to the public meeting and to shift their focus from the Board members’ economic arguments to the parents’ demands for justice. 

During their talk about ways to do that, one of the parents exclaimed, “I’d like to flush that Board report down the toilet.” When I asked how they felt about that image, they said it was wonderful—exactly how they felt about the report because it was so one-sided and unfair. So they decided to find an unused toilet, a piece of black cloth, and a child’s wagon on which to drape the cloth and mount the toilet. Their plan was to bring the toilet into the auditorium with fanfare at the point in the meeting (according to an agenda already distributed by the Board), when the Board report would be presented, presumably as a fait accompli. The leaders of the parents’ contingent would enter the auditorium from the rear, pulling the wagon with the toilet mounted on it, yelling “this is where we want to put your report.” When they would reach the stage, one of them would, with great ceremony, drop a sheaf of papers titled “BOARD REPORT” into the toilet.

The humorous tactic discombobulated the Board committee on the stage. They tried to regain control of the meeting, but the local TV and print-press reporters who were present were amused and engaged by the tactic. They turned their attention from the Board committee to the neighborhood group, asking who they were, why they were protesting, and what they wanted from the Board. The TV news coverage that night and the media coverage the next day, made for a surprisingly easy win, which was a quick decision by the Board for at least a one-year shelving of their plan to close the school.

 

S/he defines roles and directs people into them:

 

Sometimes during actions and campaigns, leaders and members may become flummoxed by events and ask their organizer, “What should we do?” The lead organizer’s reaction should not rely on conventionally defined positions, roles, and formal responsibilities within the organization. Instead, he or she should raise analytical questions that will help the leaders to define their objectives, clarify what needs to be done to achieve them, define the roles that need to be filled, and identify the members who would benefit most from leadership development. If the situation calls for an instantaneous response, the lead organizer should ask the senior leader(s), what do you think we should do? If in the unlikely event they’re stumped and there is even a slight threat to life or limb, the organizer should not hesitate to assert leadership.

The lead organizer teaches that such situations offer a chance not only to achieve outcomes that will benefit the organization’s members and constituents but that will also increase the number and capabilities of the organization’s leaders. Organizers should understand and take every opportunity to ensure the understanding of everyone in the organization that the foundational goal and the primary method of base-building community organizing is leadership development.

 

S/he knows rules of action and inaction:

 

Organizers must know when not to act. Ironically, non-action is most critical when leaders or members seem about to make a mistake. Organizers may think they know the best decision or action in a particular situation, which is not necessarily true. They may also fail to consider when it’s best to allow others to make mistakes and learn from them, not calculating the ultimate costs of preventing them from doing so by playing staff-fixer or know-it-all. The lead organizer teaches that the need for intensive leadership development in all our organizations is sidetracked when organizers take unacknowledged leadership by using their credentials and influence to make decisions that short-circuit the growth of members as leaders.

Lead organizers teach that, given our experience, the action-rule for organizers, as noted above, is to know the strategic, tactical, managerial, and administrative challenges and questions facing the organization, and to raise them in a timely way with the appropriate leaders. This posture does not preclude supporting members and leaders in other ways. The organizer’s basic job includes communicating our knowledge and skill to our members and leaders, but purposefully minimizing what we do for them so they can learn to do for themselves—in other words, making ourselves dispensable. We know from experience that a group of “ordinary” citizens, once they have learned the facts, the analytical questions, and democratic decision-making, make better decisions than their organizers—which is understandable because their combined intelligence is far greater and because they’re the ones who live with the consequences of the decisions.

 

S/he takes responsibility for time management:

 

Beyond people and funding, time often turns out to be our organizations’ most valuable “asset.” Often we have a limited window of time to access the people and funding that allows us to mount successful campaigns. And whether our organizations meet the demands of limited time, in turn, often depends on how lead organizers manage their time.

Organizers in leadership roles, including project direction, team leadership, training, and supervision, should model efficiency in the management of their time. We expect them to delegate to others what others can learn to do. We expect them to accurately calculate the time needed for planning and preparation before meetings, actions, negotiations, etc.

 

S/he masters methodologies:

 

The evaluation of lead organizers should include their ability to master more complex methodologies, such as negotiations, media/press management, research, and fundraising, which are not single events but major phases of organizing. Mastery of these methodologies includes the challenge of teaching them to members and leaders.

Moreover, the preparation of others for their roles is not limited to teaching recipe knowledge (like learning how to combine specified ingredients to produce a desirable dish) but includes out-of-the-box situations and role-play exercises that teach how to conceptualize a response to an unexpected challenge or threat, analyzing its elements and drawing on available resources to define a solution strategy and related tactics.

For example, the instinctive approach of novice organizers and leaders to the circumstances that arise in negotiations with decision-makers may prompt them to argue the advantages of their proposals, trying to talk the opposition into submission. They may give little thought to the relative power positions of the parties, their values, ideologies, and interests, the demands of their constituents and overall needs in the negotiations. But that kind of information is essential to devise a successful negotiating strategy and tactics, and it’s virtually all learned not by arguing one’s own position but asking questions and listening carefully to the answers—for which they need to be prepped by the lead organizer, primarily by role-playing and Socratic questioning. The lead organizer must not only manage a team effort but oversee the training and education of each team member and provide individualized supervision and support.

It’s also the responsibility of lead organizers to carry out in-depth evaluations of meetings, actions, negotiations, campaigns, etc., teaching that ability to others as well, as one of their highest priorities; because, regardless of any instance of organizational success or failure, the evaluations are opportunities for organizational learning. This practice can create a culture of unified, socially constructed meanings among members and leaders.

For instance, when we bring together leaders after they have confronted a decision-maker, the social construction of their shared reality is led by the organizer who helps them to understand their previous social experience as often biased against their interests and helps them to create new ideological realities that serve their commonweal. It requires them to keep track of and retell organizational history, identify potential causes of important events, and consider which provide the most organizational mileage. The process shatters the ideological meanings of opponents and validates their own meanings, which boost the movement and progress of their organization. It’s simpler in practice than it sounds.

The organizer asks those who stay for an evaluation to form their chairs in a circle. They go around the circle and briefly describe one or two facts of what happened during the action, such as who came with the decision-maker, who said what, what was the affect of the key players (e.g., relaxed, angry, arrogant, etc.)—taking not more than 30 seconds each. As each person listens to all those who describe the evolving “facts,” a consensus definition begins to take shape; so that by the last individuals in the circle, the so-called facts are “objectified,” and virtually everyone agrees with them. Then they go around the circle again, but this time each person very briefly describes the meaning of what happened. Did we win or lose, did we make more allies or opponents, did we demonstrate competence or incompetence, etc.? Here the participants conclude whether the decision-maker’s comments showed if she’s potentially an ally or an opponent, whether her aide is covertly critical of the government’s policies, who was lying and who was telling the truth, etc. By the time we reach the end of the circle, each person subscribes to their shared meanings of the event—what everyone comes to regard as “reality.”

This construction of a shared, unified social reality is the lead-in to more substantive discussion of our mistakes in the action, what we learned about our opponents, who the MVPs were on both sides, how we could be better prepared in the future, and next steps. The newly constructed social reality serves as a unifying base on which to define future issues and develop campaign strategies and tactics.

 

His/her written expression is clear and concise:

 

My advice to organizers who lack the ability to communicate in writing on a professional level has been that, regardless of the reason—say, one went to low-quality schools, had alcoholic parents and a horrible childhood, came to the country as a child and had to work to support the family, was caught up in teen drinking and/or drugging, whatever—each of us adults must take responsibility for ourselves and our shortcomings. The good news is that there are unlimited resources, virtually all free or very low-cost, available to help us learn how to write.

The teachers can be our own family members. I was a high-school dropout with no writing skills when I started college. The first semester’s requirement to take English composition was daunting and inescapable. I called my cousin who was two years ahead of me in college. He looked at the assignment, asked me what I wanted to say in the composition, and told me to write a sentence to that effect, which I did. We were off and running with one sentence after another, getting corrections and suggestions—learning to write word by word, sentence by sentence, punctuation mark by punctuation mark, paragraph by paragraph.

My cousin helped me and I’ve helped others, and virtually every community college has a remedial writing program available by extension enrollment to members of the public.

What we don’t do is ignore or make excuses for poor writing skills. Professional organizers, especially in leadership roles, must be able to write convincing grant applications, training documents, agendas and reports. We don’t assign one staff member to carry the water of another.

 

His/her oral expression is clear and well thought out:

 

Although the bread and butter of base-building organizing is the one-to-one, not speech-making before larger audiences, the ability to present new and complex ideas to a range of people in small groups, such as committee meetings and housemeetings, is indispensable to base-building organizers. The lead organizer teaches this skill to others.

In addition to careful preparation of remarks and readiness to answer questions that may be raised when talking to a group, the organizer should learn to scan the participants’ affect and posture to recognize those who may have unasked questions, which nonetheless need to be answered. This aspect of organizers’ work requires socio-emotional competence as well as language skills. Knowing what’s what is important, but knowing what to say, who to say it to, when to say it, and how to say it, is another matter entirely. It requires an ability to remain unrattled by “dead air” and deadpan expressions, and the wherewithal to empathetically read one’s listener(s).

 

S/he has a sense of humor:

 

The abiding principle of humor in organizing to be taught by the lead organizer is that humorless people are a drag. They’re a downer to be around and they literally drag down the organization.

The necessity for humor in professional practice is proportional to the costs and risks of the mission of one’s organization. Combat soldiers would find it ludicrous if told that the seriousness of their job demands that humor be stifled; but I’ve heard as much from leaders and organizers who thought that humor was out of place at a formal meeting or action. Humorless organizers and leaders often discourage participation because of their dour and dreary approach to the work. On the contrary, all our organizing has a place for humor, because humor helps to make activity that can be exhausting, punishing, and frightening bearable, sometimes even enjoyable. Perhaps, the most entertaining organizer-humorist of our era was Tim Sampson (1935-2001), who had a talent for writing politicized, satirical lyrics to sing with popular tunes during actions, which made them much more fun and probably increased turnout.

On the other hand, the lead organizer builds organizational culture that openly rejects humor which purposely or inadvertently dehumanizes others, including the opposition, camouflages bigoted opinions, belittles the mission of our organization, ridicules our values, principles, and practices, or denigrates the hopes and fears of the people we’re working to empower. Sad to say, I’ve heard all those misguided examples of humor over the years.

 

S/he shows appropriate leadership at all levels:

 

Leadership by a base-building lead organizer differs from that of members and leaders. The lead organizer focuses mostly on process rather than product, on the means and methods to consider questions and make decisions rather than the specifics of the decisions and their outcomes. It’s the job of the members and leaders to decide on instrumental objectives, such as winning a campaign for the affordable housing they need. The lead organizer is focused on advancing their capability for action research, strategizing, democratic decision-making, media relations, actions, negotiations, fundraising, etc.—all of which form the basis of a successful campaign.

In addition to asking questions, the lead organizer should consciously model desirable behavior, always aware that modeling works both intentionally and unintentionally. Losing one’s temper as a lead organizer, for example, unwittingly sets the stage for others to abandon their self-control. So it’s not just a bad look; it’s bad modeling, with potentially far-reaching consequences.

The lead organizer should mostly stand aside from the organization’s internal fray of differing opinions and, instead, promote conditions that enable constructive resolution of disputes and conflicts, thus fostering shared realities which unify and strengthen the organization.

The lead organizer should also teach staff not to become triangulated or designated as a “fixer” by those engaged in internal organizational disputes. Staff organizers should learn to shun the role of arbitrator or mediator in such conflicts. If the conflict can be satisfied by existing organization policy or procedure, it’s brought to bear by the senior leadership. If such policy or procedure is lacking, the insufficiency is handed off to the appropriate committee within the organization to rectify. If the matter is entirely personal between individuals, the organizer may direct them to meet face-to-face to work out their differences and may assist them by inviting one or two leaders to be present as disinterested observers and referees when they meet.

In those rare instances when the lead organizer believes that failing to act directly could doom the organization, the correct response is to raise that concern immediately with any accessible leaders. Rather than arguing for a position or action, even in an existential crisis, the appropriate role ensures that, insofar as possible, discussion and decision-making will be fair, that all relevant facts and arguments will be heard, and that the potential consequences of any possible decision will be fully considered. The rule, taught by Burt Housman (1927-2019), is that it’s the organizer’s job to multiply alternatives. This includes the lead organizer who fosters the conditions that will prime others to do so as well.

 

S/he is a non-ideologue:

 

Base-building organizing, which is a directly democratic process, necessarily works as a non-ideological form of social-change practice—with one exception, which has been articulated in numerous ways but generally has been regarded as “Jeffersonian.”

Jefferson thought that the power of the state should not be concentrated in a national government but that it should instead be divided between national, state, and local governments. Moreover, he proposed that the local governments should be anchored in directly democratic assemblies in which the people govern themselves. He recommended that the people should have the right to prevent higher governments and private wealth (e.g., corporations now) from “infringing on their liberties.” He believed that the rights to be respected by the state were God-given—not subject to weakening by the state—although he unreservedly favored “a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Jefferson also believed that public education, a free press, and the ability of the citizenry to call to account the forces of institutional corruption, which he associated with aristocrats and would-be tyrants over the people, were all required to ensure the continuation of a republic that serves the commonweal.

We expect lead organizers and other senior BBCO staff to recognize Jeffersonianism as our only ideology because its essence is to empower the powerless directly, which is fundamental to our dedicated mission and the most reliable means to end corruption and serve the commonweal.

 

EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS

 

We expect exceptional performance from organizers who manage projects or desire to do so. In our experience, the most effective managers in faith-based organizing, where advanced religious education can be a significant asset, not only have undergraduate degrees but professional ones as well.

 

S/he knows and uses community organizing theory:

 

Organizers can’t fully make sense of their day-to-day experience without placing it in a larger conceptual framework, which is the role of theory.

In addition to the moral and ethical guidance of our faith traditions, we rely on a “Unified Community Organizing Theory” which is based on social science. It’s a unified practice theory, which integrates empirically grounded theories of social learning, social exchange, social construction of reality, and social development. It allows an organizer to see, prepare for, and influence that which is not visible but which inevitably will be encountered. The theory defines the field of action in which our organizing takes place, and the main players and the forces that govern their actions. It allows us to understand why things have happened in the past, why they’re happening now, and how to make them happen in the future by defining roles for our day-to-day work in the action field.

The usefulness of practice theory in BBCO is realized by internalizing those roles. This requires (a) studying the theory sufficiently to understand and mentally incorporate the concepts into one’s view of the world, and (b) then using the theory by acting on the theoretical knowledge. The idea is suggested by a Buddhist teaching: “To know and not to do, is not really to know.”

While many other theoretical ideas may be useful, we evaluate staff leaders on their use of unified CO practice theory as the lens through which they see and interact with the field of action because, in effect, it takes off our blinders and gives us a broadly based map to navigate the world in which we live and work. It’s the project director’s job to ensure that the entire staff understands and can use the unified practice theory.

 

S/he knows own strengths and weaknesses:

 

As our professional responsibilities and authority increase in scope and effects, it becomes increasingly important that we know, or better yet, remediate, our own weaknesses and help others to overcome theirs, so to better exercise our collective strength.

Weaknesses may be professional or personal—for example, a failure to improve one-to-one performance or drinking too much, too often. The “weakness” may be psychological or emotional. It may be based on intellectual or ideological misunderstandings. In any case, whether the subject is oneself or others, it’s grist for the project manager’s mill.

 

S/he accurately reads the character of others:

 

Exceptional performance of top staff leaders depends fundamentally on their ability to read the character of others, because titles and job descriptions often tell us little about the moral and ethical values or their absence that account for the behavior of the people we encounter in the action field. And that skill must also be taught to staff and leaders, because CO beginners tend to be misled by the self-descriptions of potential adversaries and allies. They need the ability to probe below the surface to discern character which drives behavior.

For example, when I was working under the Assistant Chief Administrative Officer of L.A. County, a time of my wet-behind-the-ears CO, I was assigned to convene and chair a group to recommend to the Board of Supervisors, the replacement of Olive View Hospital, which had been damaged beyond repair in the 1971 earthquake. About 15 “community members” attended the dozen meetings I staffed. After much deliberation, they recommended an option supported by most experts, which was to provide coverage for the Valley not with one multistory building inaccessible to most residents but three kinds of facilities: a central center that would care for the most serious and costly medical conditions by specialists using the most advanced equipment; two or three more accessible regional centers that would deal with serious medical conditions by regular physicians; and numerous neighborhood offices staffed by nurse practitioners who would deal with minor medical issues, referrals to more advanced care, and public health education. Everyone was pleased with the report and they sent it to my boss.

A few days later, as I was walking past the open door of his office, I saw him sitting at his desk reading the report. I stopped and asked what he thought of it. Without hesitation, he laughed, reached over to his trash can, and dropped the report in it. I asked him what he planned to recommend to replace the hospital. Without missing a beat, he said, “We've already given a contract to an architectural-engineering firm to replace the building using the same basic design.”

The intense feelings of betrayal experienced by the committee members hardly compared to my own remorse for naïvely leading them astray, believing in the good faith of the CAO. I didn’t know enough then to ask myself why the CAO would assign such responsibility to a low-level staffer rather than a professional hospital facilities planner, or to see that the citizens committee was a PR exercise for the CAO. It taught me that the ability to analyze both the institutional and the personal character and interests of others—to always look at the world through their eyes—is invaluable when dealing with other players in the action field.

 

S/he is actively invested in own professional growth:

 

Experience has taught me to value “learners” out of proportion to their experience. It doesn’t take long, rarely more than a year or two, to discover that the learner who arrived with little experience but energetic desire to keep learning, breezed past many experienced organizers who took too much pride in what they had already learned. So it makes sense to expect that project directors and other senior staff will model this characteristic.

What they demonstrate for others is that the organizer who wants to grow professionally observes everything and asks a lot of questions of senior staff, consultants, and other organizers, listening analytically to their answers. This organizer volunteers or takes the initiative to do whatever job needs to be done, with no embarrassment when asking for help to do the job competently. The organizer committed to growing professionally reads movement history, analyses of government and corporate structures and operations, political and economic theories, studies of human behavior, and participant and scholarly accounts of base-building organizing.

A project director should teach that the organizer who wants to grow professionally never stands still in the organization. This individual is always learning, moving laterally or upward, and contributing more and more to the analyses and action plans of the organization—before long, moving into a position of leadership. The driving principle is that the most important activities of existing leaders have the effect of widening and deepening the circle of leaders.

 

S/he actively supports development of the profession:

 

As a professional movement, the scattered initiatives of BBCO pale by comparison to the unity of the last century’s base-built labor movement, women’s suffrage movement, and civil rights movement at their height, all of which had historic national impact, despite their internal differences and disputes.

The most appalling demonstration of BBCO dereliction has been the absence of a unified nationwide response to the right-wing anti-masking, anti-vaccination campaign, which has probably cost hundreds of thousands of lives and remains a major factor in the nation’s inability to end the pandemic for the millions of immunocompromised and elderly, especially those with co-morbidities, which requires the same level of herd immunity we have achieved with several other communicable diseases. Hundreds of base-building organizers and thousands of leaders in their organizations have failed to use their intelligence and initiative to get themselves together into an organized, coherent national movement to take on the death-dealing COVID enablers.

One credible explanation of this inadequacy is that CO disdains professional education in favor of short-term job training. Professional education reaches beyond basic principles, methods, and lessons from past actions, campaigns, negotiations, etc. to encompass the study of history, social movements, biographies, national development, democratic theory and institutions, public administration, and unified practice theory. A professional education in BBCO can instill analytical, conceptual, and creative thinking and problem-solving to meet changing conditions and the unknown challenges they present. Moreover, it can produce organizers sufficiently educated and visionary to help leaders produce compelling strategic moral visions that inspire, unify, and mobilize large BBCO constituencies on national issues.

But BBCO does not have an active group of senior organizers who support the advancement of the profession by introducing professional-level education, which is a hallmark of almost all other practice professions, including accounting, architecture, journalism, law, medicine, religion, social work, etc. Although CO is a young profession, there is no excuse for this shortcoming. So we expect senior staff to support advanced professional education for community organizers.

 

S/he articulates a strategic moral vision:

 

Although the director of an organizing project is unlikely to be the author of the strategic moral vision that guides every dimension of the organizing, he or she must be thoroughly familiar with that vision and committed to it in practice, both strategically and spiritually.

Practically, the project director should articulate the vision, whenever and wherever appropriate. He or she should promote policies and practices that are prompted by the vision, should incorporate it into the organization’s culture, and should model behavior that honors and directly supports the vision, especially for leaders and staff.

The desired effect is that it’s apparent to everyone that the values, principles, objectives, and methods of the organization are driven by a strategic moral vision, one that accords with the shared values of the three Abrahamitic religions—specifically: righteousness, which is the foundation of truth; truth, which is the foundation of justice; justice, which is the foundation of freedom; freedom, which is the foundation of peace; and peace, which is the foundation of compassion—all of which, in all our organizing, we work to uphold as the life-sustaining mission of humankind.

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