 We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These words from the Declaration of Independence are familiar to many of us, and yet it took 143 years for women to get the right to vote and 189 years for black people to get the right to vote. And still today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are still only words for many people. Here in Boston, life expectancy varies by 30 years depending on where you live. In Roxbury, with many poor and black people, life expectancy is 59 years. In the back bay, wealthy and mostly white life expectancy is 91 years. It's tough to have liberty when you are in prison. The United States incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 people. Our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most countries in the world. Millions of people in our country don't have health care, a decent job, good education, a home they can afford, and that makes it pretty hard to pursue happiness. So on this show, you are going to meet people who are making it possible to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People today who are making the words of the Declaration of Independence come true. Hello, my name is Michael Jacoby-Brown, and I'm your host for We Hold These Truths, and today we're really lucky and honored to have with us James Johnson of Sun Consulting from Limerick, Pennsylvania. James, welcome. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, and how you got your values, and what led you into organizing for justice? Sure, I'll be more than happy to. I started, gosh, I was born in Philadelphia, and then kind of in Limerick, it's a little bit outside of Philadelphia, and so it's finally like a complete circle for me, because even though I was born in Philadelphia, was raised in South Carolina on a small farm. We call it a farm, because we have pigs and other animals, chickens and so forth. And learned a lot from growing up there. I grew up with my grandparents, and they taught me a lot about being polite. They taught me what folks say about me, that Southern hospitality or Southern manners, and so I learned a lot from them growing up in a house with them. I'm the oldest of seven children, or eight children, I'm one of those, right? And so I had a lot of time to really watch them grow, and they're still growing up, growing up together now. But I think what it was, Michael, was that coming from a big family, I got used to being around a lot of people, and I think throughout life I just ended up loving just being around people, just loving people, and just seeing the good in people. And I think that's one of the things about community organizing itself is that you start to learn that people are just basically good people, and people are trying to get ahead just like everyone else in society. And so a lot of things out there really slows people down from getting to meet their dreams and so forth. And so we have this opportunity by growing up and getting to know people and know how people tick and so forth, that we have an opportunity to make certain changes in society. So that's one of the things I started to learn when I was growing up with the big family. We didn't have a lot of money or a lot of resources, but we had each other. We had the neighborhood, one of us didn't have this, a neighbor had it, and we didn't mind sharing things with each other like that. So after South Carolina I went to school, and my degrees are in music, so being in, when people ask me, how in the world you got into organizing, when you were a musician. And I still call myself a musician today, but I learned something along the way in organizing that spirit, that spirit of song, being able to go to a rally and you have your own songs and you're singing them and you're marching to them, and everyone feels that sense of connectedness. Some of the things that you learn when you're doing organizing, that whole thing around being connected with each other. And so going to college in music helped me figure out the spiritual side of this, and I thought that was really key that, and this is before I was an organizer, but I always realized that when I did become an organizer that I had this kind of flame, eternal flame here inside of me, and so the music part of that, part of my career helped me with that. And then eventually moved to western New York, and what I started to do after graduate school was I wanted to give back to the community, and so walking down the street in Chicago County, in Dunkirk, New York, and saw this building, it looked like a food ministry, and then I saw the sign on it says United Way, see big brand, and I said it's a United Way agency, I should see if I can go volunteer for them. And I went, and sure enough I became a volunteer for them, and working in the strawberry fields while I'm volunteering there, that's how I was making my rent back in the day. And so as I'm doing volunteering work there with their food pantry and so forth, and I noticed something in the strawberry fields that we had a lot of migrant workers, and they were always happy, you know, I'm sitting here, my back is hurting, you know, bending over trying to pick strawberries, not an easy job, but they were just always happy, they're singing in the fields, they're dancing in the fields, and I just loved the spirit that they had, they weren't making a lot of money, but they were just happy, you know, they could live with what they had, but they had each other, and so that got me just thinking about things as well. And so when I was doing the work with the rural ministry, they had this one opening for, it was called the People's Action Coalition, and so what they did, they advocate for people's rights. And I just, at the time, this is when I'm starting to grow, I'm like, oh, it's just a bunch of people getting together to make a fuss. And so, but I decided that I wanted to try it out. And I realized from there that there was just so much stuff still to do out there in the world. The things that they were fighting for at the time, they were fighting for senior high-rises, and they were fighting for racial equality within Dunkirk, New York, and I was, I started to get into it. And once I started to feel like my heart was changing, it was almost like a transformation, one side of me was always, you know, people are bad, you know, and people need to get over themselves. And then you find out, you know, this transformation is that there are a lot of people out there who are in situations, and it's not their fault that they're in this situation. There are some bigger root causes of these situations that's happening out there. And so this is when I found out about this organization called Center for Third World Organizing. They're based out of Oakland, California, and now they're in different places. But in the day, what they did was they bring people of color from all over the country to learn community organizing skills and place them with an organization so they can continue to enhance their skills on the ground. And I just thought that was just one of the most wonderful things. And I mean, coming from Dunkirk, New York, and getting to go to Oakland. Okay, that's cool. And so, and the program lasted for eight weeks. And so we had this opportunity. I started out by working with an organization called Denver Action for a Better Community, and that was out of Denver, Colorado. And so this was the first time I've ever learned, like, what's a campaign? You know, what is fundraising supposed to look like? You know, what is a membership? And our campaign at the time, we were looking into lead poisoning in Denver, Colorado. And so we took this kind of on a statewide level, but at the same time on a local level, the statewide level being that the Department of Health is required to give kids under a certain age lead poisoning tests, and they weren't adhering to it. And on the other side of it, the Housing Authority knew that there was lead in a lot of the buildings. But you know, one, they didn't tell folks about it who were moving into the buildings, or two, didn't have a plan to get rid of the lead. So we successfully won that campaign. And so we got the Housing Authority to do what they were supposed to do, and the State Department, they started giving the tests. And this is not a good thing to say, but what happened was one of the kids tested positive for lead. And so organizing what we call as a handle, right, is something that you can grasp. And so when one of the kids came up positive, you know, that really galvanized the community to take more action and work with other Housing Authority developments at that time. And so that was my experience of my real, what I call my first real organizing experience and understood, you know, what power is and why power is important. How can you use your power against someone else to be able to get your point across? And so that was a great thing. How did you actually get the Housing Authority, the State, or the City to, you know, fix the lead paint and get them to test the kids? What did you actually do? What was there? Well, I mean, well, definitely when that one kid came up positive, that was the big thing that got the people engaged and involved. It took a lot of door knocking, going around the neighborhood and letting people know the problem. But the thing that helped us is, I think the first thing that helped us was doing the research, finding out about lead poisoning. What are the federal regulations around lead poisoning? And I think that we found some handles that way as well, smaller handles that we could then take to the neighborhood. But then we started using the strategies of bringing people to meetings, right? Sitting down, educating them, what's the situation. And it's also, it's not about me, it's about everybody in the room making sure that we're all on the same page. And so, like, we're teaching folks how to run some of the meetings and teaching them the information and what to say, how to say it. And also, we were moving forward, but we realized that we weren't getting enough people right away as fast enough. So, we started to do other things to build that commitment from our residents, our constituency was involved. And we started to have them do what we call house meetings. Because we realized that people, you know, they know each other, they can invite whoever they want to come to the meetings. And you can, you know, it was, it was faster than doing a doorknob because you get four to six people in a room. And you can talk with them for a half hour. Right. They invite their friends. Yes, right. Right. Their neighbors, whatever. So, we got them to do that. We got them engaged that way. And like we said, then once you have four to six people already engaged, um, and they, when it got other folks, so they could have house meetings. They're doing it. They're making the food. You're following the iron rule of organizing, never do for people what they can do for themselves. So, you didn't bring the food, I assume. No, no, no, you didn't invite the people. No, they invited the people. Right. Okay. That's real helpful for people to understand that. Yeah. One of the other things to Michael that was tough at first, but I think one of the real big lessons I've learned in organizing is about membership. I think, like we said, you know, people can do for themselves and people know what they can afford as a membership. We had to use five dollars to become a member of their organization. So, we started to build an organization. You know, we had a name for it. We now having people buy into it. They're not just buying into with a monetary value, but they buy into the whole process of building. But the money counts too. They're paying something. Yes, that's right. And they're giving something. And I can tell you, there are a lot of meetings I've been to where people are like, wait a second. You know, I pay my dues, you know, and they're really into it. And so, the membership thing was a good thing for us as we did the campaign. But I think that the main thing after that, right, is not coming to the point where you have to think of what kind of action you're going to take. You know, you're just going to sit there and say, well, you know, they're smart. They know what to do. They'll take care of it themselves. They would have done that a long time ago if that was the case. So then we thought about what kind of actions we could do as a group, not the organizers, you know, saying, well, this is the action we're going to do. I've seen that happens before, too, that people come up with the action before and try to bring people in. And then they find out it's the wrong thing. Right. We call them puppet organizers. It's a small phrase, right. Yeah. So, what we decided to do, of course, we went, we, at the time, we were doing direct action, you know. And so, we went directly to the health department. You know, we asked them, we made our posters. We were very creative and stuff like that. And we asked folks just at the health department, you know, these are the, this is what the law says. This is what the law says you're supposed to be doing. You know, can you yes or no? And you always get an answer, right? Can you adhere to the laws around lead poisoning? And I think they were so shocked at the time. And plus, the other thing that helped us, too, was you have to have the press involved. Because they're like, oh, someone's about to get it. Yes, we can go. We're going to go and see this in action. And so, they're there with us. And so, we asked that demand, right, will you make your changes to the law or make your changes to what's happening right now? Yes or no? And they said yes to all of our demands. And so, and the housing authority was a little bit different. Because we, I mean, we did go there. We, we line up at the office of the housing authority director. He knew we were coming. Right. And he did not show up. Right. And so, somebody in our constituency had a cell phone number. Cool. And so, we called him on his cell phone. And we demanded that he show up. He eventually showed up. Interesting. That's correct. So, that, but that was kind of how I first got into the work. And it just continued on and on. Went to Sacramento after that. And started a group called Sacramento Community's Taking Action for Neighborhood Dignity. We just call it stand. One of the things I've learned also about, especially when you're building your organization, come up with a snazzy name. Right. You know, something that people can get into and can understand it. Right. And so, understand. And so, we did that. We started doing work around police brutality. And especially around police misconduct. So, another thing that I've learned throughout the years is a good organizer learns how to organize on a local basis. They can learn how to organize on a statewide basis. And they can learn how to organize on a national basis. And once you've kind of been able to do all three of those, it really helps you to understand the bigger picture. Because then you realize on a local level, there's something nationally that's having an impact on folks on a local level. Can you think of an example? Well, sure. I mean, that's the idea around the whole thing around police brutality and police misconduct. It's that, you know, you can see it on a local level, but legislation at the higher level, like say in the 1990s, when it came up with the crime bill. And they thought that that was going to be the thing that alleviates crime when, you know, what happened was a lot of police officers started having more misconduct. Did we see the whole Rodney King incident? You know, I mean, and that was at the turning point of exposing what was already happening on a local level. But the reason why was it like that, because they started to show it on a national level. And then people started to wonder what was happening in our own neighborhoods. And so why that was important for us, because we realized that there was a lot of research out there around police officers and what they were doing in neighborhoods and so forth. But no one was like collecting the data on a local scale or on a national scale. And so we started to do a lot of that research and figure out that it was so important for us, because now we knew something was messed up nationally, but the people that are hurting the most are the people right down on the streets. So that was another good lesson learned out of this. And so the Sacramento time was really spent and learning how to build an organization. So I already knew how to go outdoor knocking and all of the skills that needed to be an organizer. But the next level I think for me growing up was to learn how to keep people within the organization. Don't come up with a one-time action and then let everyone go away. But why are we doing this? Because we're building communities. We're building organizations. Now why is that so important James? Sure. It's because people owns it. It's a nice ownership piece to have. And you can identify with the group. You're able to see the values of having this and you have created this together. I'll give you an example of what happened in Newark, New Jersey. The neighborhood had just built their own plan of what they wanted the neighborhood to look like for five years. And so the gas and electric company went in and decided that they were just going to put a switching station in the middle of the neighborhood, took it to the city council, city council voted on it. But they didn't ask the residents who just came together with this plan and they wanted these things to happen. They just built their cohesion working together, going around doing the door knocking, getting the neighborhood together. And then this happened to them. So they went to the Urban League over there and they came together as a neighborhood association with the Urban League and decided that they were going to challenge this. And they went around, they got petitions from 500 of the neighbors in the neighborhood. And in their city hall meeting they showed up and they told them that they were not allowed a switching station to be in their neighborhood because it was not part of their plan. They worked almost and this is our neighborhood. And so that was the thing that they said and this was our organization that's going to be the one who is hurt upon this. And they already had an organization. And so it was the Fairmont Heights Neighborhood Association. And what are some of the elements that go into building a powerful organization like the Fairmont Heights? I mean, what are the building blocks? Sure. First off, having that ownership. And how do you get that? How do you get the ownership? Sure. By letting folks do the work. Let them come out and do the door knocking. For me, it was more of just teaching them what to do. And once they do it, you sit back with them again. How did that feel? You have to evaluate. You let them do it and reflect and evaluate. That's right. And then let them come up with the tasks. We can say these are called tactics. We can say that this is part of a bigger strategy. But then, for example, that's what you want to get them to start saying. And then the experience of it. If you went through a campaign, you're not experienced. And now you realize that you can tell that story to others. So they go down to the City Council in Newark and they speak, I assume, not you. Yes, exactly. And our job is just to prep them. We sometimes sit down and we ask, well, what if they say this? And how are you going to respond? So people just think that you just get people together and you just go down and do it. No, but there's a method to it all. And then as you go through the method, you really start to realize what you built. And once you build this, we want to keep it. So let's come up with something. Come up with our name and come up with our mission. What are we about? So when other folks come in, you know what we're about. You can explain it to folks. You know how to ask them to be involved with the campaign as well. So what are some of the lessons, you know, you've been doing this now, James, for decades. What are some of the overall lessons you would like to communicate, particularly to people who are just maybe getting into community and labor organizing? What are some of the key elements you would boil them down to? Yeah, I think if I was to do this all over again now that I've grown up, I would learn right away the neighborhood, the area that you're looking to focus in. That's just as easy as getting in a car or walking the neighborhood and just looking around. What are some of the things that make this neighborhood a great neighborhood? What are some of the things that we have to still do within this neighborhood? And part of that going through a neighborhood, right, is we call it an analysis. But the ideal is that maybe you see some kids on the corner, you know, go ask them, hey, what's it like in this neighborhood? You know, just do some quick data to get a feel for it, and then you go and sit and you assess some more. You ask them an open-ended question. You don't say, do you like it or not? Right. That's right. You ask them, like, what's it like? That's real important. How do you speak? You know, what do you think about that corner over there? Things like that, and let them talk. That's right. Two things I've learned. People like to talk, and two, people like to talk about themselves. And I think those are important things to remember when you're talking to folks, and it's not about you. It's about them. Right. That's key. And how did you learn that? How did you learn that that it's not about you doing for them, but it's about them? How did you learn that and how do you do it? Yeah. I think you just have to be out there. And then you learn from instinct, that once you're out there talking to folks, and you have to have what I would say more confidence in yourself as well. I used to tell folks, I like it when I'm talking to folks, I want them to feel just as comfortable to talk to me as they were talking to their brother or sister. And so you have to learn how to talk to people and be willing to talk to people. Being able to just be able to gel with folks. So that's one of the things, Michael. And then going along with that, it's just plain respect. And I've seen this even with organizers that they're just doing it and they're just going through the motions. And sometimes it works. But the thing is, is that don't lose your own identity. But just realize that people want to be respected. People want to be heard. People want you to, they want to be involved. And I think that we take, and we have to make sure that we don't take our own baggage to the door. That's one of the things I learned first off. Knock on that door, three seconds, oh, they're not home. You learn how to knock twice or three times, right? But sometimes we go to the door scared. You hear Rottweiler here, there. But the ideal is that you go to the next door and to the next door. And you have to be persistent. That's another thing. When you're asking people things, you wait for an answer. Okay. And if you say something, mean what you say. Right. I think these are great lessons. We've got to end this time. But I want to thank you because what you said, listening, respect, going on to the next door, those are all key lessons. And so we were really lucky today to have James Johnson from Sun Consulting in Limerick, Pennsylvania with us. James has been an organizer for decades now and has led and taught and helped people reflect as he described himself many years. So again, I'm Michael Jacoby Brown, the host of We Hold These Truths. And today our guest again was James Johnson of Sun Consulting in Limerick, Pennsylvania. And I think if you go back and listen to James' lessons, you'll learn a lot about what it really means to be an organizer. So thank you very much for listening. Okay. And hopefully we'll see you again soon.