2019 CIIP Program Book CIIP Booklet 2019 | Page 49

Community Partner: United Workers
Intern: Barae Hirsch
Site Supervisor: Adriana Foster
What is United Workers?
United Workers is a human rights organization led by the poor to end poverty. We focus
on developing membership and leadership across Baltimore city and the state to win eco-
nomic human rights. We build membership across multiple lines and barriers to transform
economic development in Baltimore from a failed trickle down economics approach to a
Fair Development model; as well as organize statewide for workers’ rights.
In organizing, it can be easy to get lost in the weeds. So much needs to be done: phone calls and
door knocks and emails; meetings; ordering food for meetings and putting out leftovers and deal-
ing with thirty hungry people waiting for an order that went wrong; providing rides to members
without cars; painting signs; printing, scanning, copying, folding flyers; offering condolences to
members going through rough times; staying informed on the issues… the list goes on. Organiz-
ing is not glamorous -- this I knew. But working at United Workers has showed me just how many
moving parts and people are required to build and sustain a movement, how little of the work
involves grand, revolutionary scheming and how much of it is about meeting members’ needs and
building relationships and maybe, just maybe, fitting in some political education and leadership
development in the process.
The struggles in this city are all interlinked. Housing has to do with unjust waste disposal has to do
with food apartheid has to do with environmental justice has to do with transportation and edu-
cation -- all have to do with redlining and racism and poverty. Sometimes, when I’m entering the
200th name into the Nationbuilder software and tagging someone with “AHTFRally2019” to RSVP
them for an Affordable Housing Trust Fund rally, I forget why I’m doing this. But when I remem-
ber those intersections, when I hear community members’ stories of displacement, when I talk to
residents outside their doors -- who are surprisingly eager to talk despite having their Saturday
mornings intruded on -- and listen to their desire for change and inclusion, my own small role fits
clearly into the bigger fight.
I have a lot to learn. I have a long way to go in practicing patience and listening, in being okay
working behind the scenes, in accepting uncertainty and unrealized plans. Mostly, I’m grateful to
my supervisor Adriana, for her unrelenting graciousness and humor and treating me like a friend,
for the members of UW welcoming me into their space and sharing their work, the residents of
McElderry Park and Curtis Bay and Harlem Park for their generosity and resilience, and this city,
for continuing to grow and flourish from the bottom up and the inside out.
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• Regularly canvassed and made
phone calls to East, South, and
West Baltimore neighborhoods to
increase outreach and membership
of United Workers and community
land trusts, followed up with res-
idents about community needs,
and coordinate transportation and
childcare
• Attended and helped organize
meetings and rallies on affordable
housing and environmental justice/
Zero Waste; attended Leadership
School (weekly leadership develop-
ment/political education training
with other community leaders)
• Researched around community
land trusts; built relationships with
other community organizations;
processed all data from canvassing,
phone banking, meetings, events,
etc.