Overview
The People’s Assemblies coordinator will lead and bottomline coordination of this year’s Assemblies process, which is anchored by Reclaim The Block and Black Visions along with partner organizations and a Black Advisory Table. The Path Forward Campaign is seeking a contractor who will be responsible for managing the People’s Assemblies coordinating committee and ensuring that working groups and partners are aligned and driving the overall goals of the process. This role will be a lead project manager and coordinator, responsible for managing the different working bodies and developing necessary tools to keep the project & participants supported and on task.
This is a contract position with Black Visions, running from June-December 2021.
See last pages of this posting for more information on our People’s Assembly process this year.
Core Responsibilities
Working with Reclaim the Block & Black Visions along with other partners and stakeholders to plan and lead the work of the People’s Assemblies, including ensuring the launching & completion of overall project.
Project Management
- Managing the development and implementation of work plan & executing the overall strategy
- Develop and coordinate materials and systems and maintain consistency of implementation (documents/materials, toolkits, utilizing monday.com for shared project management etc.)
- Leading People’s Assemblies Coordinating Committee
- Facilitating weekly meetings with the Coordinating Committee, made up of leads of each working group
- Support the development and maintain work plans of ~6-7 work groups (current working groups include: Care, Comms + Art, Youth assemblies, Logistics, Facilitations, Synthesis, Outreach + Organizing)
- Support leads of working groups
- Lead the Logistics working group
- Develop tools to maintain healthy relationships and support partners/ leaders throughout process
- Monitor capacity and identify needs of existing & new partners
- Determine and lead any necessary internal study & training for coordinating team & partners to build confidence and support decentralized structure
Project Administration
- Communication & coordination
- Sending out email reminders, zoom links, calendar invites.
- Documenting and tracking notes and maintaining organization
- Communicating effectively and consistently with the coordinating committee to create agenda and facilitate work moving
- Prepping and/or delegating responsibility to ensure that all necessary materials are provided
- Utilizing and keeping up with our shared project management tool (monday.com)
- Maintain overall budget
- Oversee/coordinate funding for grants, partners, and staff alongside our funding partner SEE/OSF
- Work with our fiscal sponsor to maintain and follow financial processes
Experience and Qualifications
Ideal candidates will have a strong praxis in community-centered decision making, political education, and coalition building. They will have a background of knowledge in abolitionist and Black liberation theory and know how to translate that in an accessible way to others. Additionally, they are an excellent project manager, having led at least two multi-month community projects.
Additional Desired Qualifications/Experience:
- Strong interpersonal skills and attention to detail
- Familiarity with non-profit structures, practices and organizational cultures
- Commitment to liberation of ALL Black people regardless of ethnicity, age, ability, class, gender, sexuality, etc
- Experience leading and managing others within projects
- Working knowledge of Minneapolis politics and relationships with local BIPOC leaders
- Strong writing and verbal communication skills; experience using Microsoft Suite, basic internet-based technology and data entry/management
- Common sense, flexibility, and teamwork skills with the ability to exercise independent judgment
- Time and project management skills; ability to pivot to meet current events and organizational needs while maintaining attention to detail
- Working in collective or cooperative settings
- Continuing and/or adapting previously developed programming
Must be willing and able to:
- Communicate needs and boundaries as they arise
- Delegate tasks to focus on their primary role
- Speak in front of small and large groups (with translation provided as necessary)
- Speak to what abolition is and why it is essential to Black liberation
- Have a driver’s license and access to reliable transportation
This is a short term, contract position that will run from June 2021 to late December 2021. This position will pay $30,000 – 35,000 for 6 months plus compensation for benefits.
To Apply
Please submit a resume, cover letter, and a proposal outlining how you would coordinate and execute this work to assembliescoordinator@blackvisionsmn.org. Applications will be considered as they are received. We aim to make a hire by June 7.
More about People’s Assemblies in 2021
At the center of our plans for 2021 are People’s Assemblies to build a People’s Action Plan for Safety and to seed from this a tool for shared governance. People’s Movement Assemblies are a tradition that comes to us from our comrades in the U.S. and Global South. Preparation for this process is currently underway, with assemblies to take place in summer and early fall 2021. This phase of assemblies will be completed in late fall 2021.
What’s a People’s Assembly?
- A gathering of people who are impacted by an issue, coming together to define and study the problems they’re facing, name solutions they want to see, and identify the next steps they want to take together
- Some bring together people who share a neighborhood, an identity, a workplace, or have other shared experiences. Some will be broader cross-community gatherings.
- Can be held online or outdoors in-person.
Why Assemblies & Our Goals
Black Visions and Reclaim the Block don’t have all the answers, but we know that together the community is full of experts about safety – especially people with firsthand experience dealing with violence and policing: Black people, immigrants, people of color, indigenous people, queer and trans people, sex workers, survivors of violence, and disabled people. Through these assemblies, we want people who often get left out of city policy conversations to talk with each other to shape a vision for safety in Minneapolis.
Through these assemblies, we plan to come together across differences and generate stories and data that can support all our work. We will discuss the safety issues people are most concerned about, the transformative solutions people propose, and a new vision of our city that community members want to live in. Through collaborative decision making and principled struggle, we will turn this into the People’s Agenda – which we can use as a roadmap for a city budget that invests in people, policies that aim to uproot violence, and builds the solutions we will practice as a community.
The goals of our 2021 assemblies are
- To bring together people & organizations in Minneapolis who are impacted by policing and get aligned around a shared vision of safety, including a set of demands that we can take action on together
- Reach a critical mass by engaging over 3,000 people at least once in the process and move 150 participants to be consistently involved in defining this vision and agenda in order to make it more possible for us to win things from the city like:
- More community power in policy & budget decisions – like implementing participatory budgeting & expanding our definition of safety,
- Shape what a Department of Public Safety could look like
- Identify and win funding for community / budget cuts to policing
- Hold a process that is rooted in care and principled struggle that is able to navigate conflict by holding and communicating clear boundaries and intentions
We are organizing assemblies with an abolitionist and Black queer/trans feminist lens including meeting people where they are and moving together. We are inviting people into a process that will focus time and energy on ideas that build community power, governance, and move our city closer to a holistic approach to health and safety.
Right now, we are not using assemblies to create an alternative model of community governance – although we see our 2021 PMA’s as an experiment that might lead to that as we keep building the muscles to dream & govern for ourselves.
