ORGANIZERS’ GUIDE How Do I Become an Organizer? When we think about leaders, many of us think of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, or other well-known spiritual activists. Although such people are very important in social movements, we often disregard the vital role organizers play in building a movement. For example, do you know who organized people to go door-todoor before your local school board election this year? Although someone like MLK is important to the spiritual and public relations aspects of a movement, equally vital are the people who do the nuts and bolts work that keeps things moving forward. So how does each of us contribute to helping to heal and transform the world? How can our communities work to end the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian land? You probably see the frustration in your community with regard to the violence in Israel and Palestinian, and doubtless this frustration only grows as people feel confused and don’t know where to direct their energies. A good organizer not only helps people focus their energies, but enables people to believe in themselves and follow through with their own ideas. Ideally, an organizer is in a constant process of training organizers who are in some ways more skilled than him or herself. This is probably the most important thing to remember: each of us wants to believe in ourself, and we want to help others believe in themselves. Good leaders both help delegate tasks and help others assume roles of responsibility while simultaneously building each person’s investment in the organization. Why Should I Start a Tikkun Group? To take on the project of tikkun olam is no small task, and such an undertaking requires the efforts of many eager hands and hearts. We need your help because only in working together can we change the world. Israelis and Palestinians struggling to keep the peace movement alive in a sea of violence need your help too. We need to end the Occupation, and that just isn’t possible without a change in U.S. foreign policy. We know that the American Jewish community needs not only to develop a critical political stance toward Israel, but to develop a place in our hearts where we can empathize with the plight of the Palestinians. And the same thing goes for those people who feel great empathy for the plight of the Palestinians but are unable to see or understand the suffering of the Israelis. We need you to start a Tikkun group because we cannot grow without you. A union is only as strong as its members, and this is also true of Tikkun. In addition to our work on educating and doing outreach on the Israeli-Palestinian situation, we are engaged in many other projects. Most of these focus on the idea that we need a New Bottom Line in this world, one that addresses people’s yearning for meaning and speaks to their deep spiritual needs in conjunction with their material needs. Tikkun seeks to bring that spiritual reality into conversations about politics, business, the professions, and consumerism in order to transform the way in which we interact in our society.
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What We Will Give You 1. You can contact Robyn Thomas, Tikkun’s executive director, or Stephanie Mackley, our membership coordinator, at the Berkeley office at (510) 644-1200, or e-mail Robyn at robyn@tikkun.org or Stephanie at members@tikkun.org. Our National Organizer, Lynne Canning, who is based in Santa Fe, also welcomes your calls or e-mails at (505) 424-9714 or ldcanning@hotmail.com. 2. Our monthly Tikkun Community Leaders conference call takes place on the 1st Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. Pacific Time. This is an opportunity for local groups to share their experiences and wisdom, brainstorm activities together, and provide input into Tikkun Community events. 3. Once a month, we will send you information about new and renewing Tikkun Community members in your area whom you can contact to welcome to the Community and to invite them to your meetings. 4. We have two exciting Tikkun Community conferences coming up this year. This year we are planning on combining our annual “Teach-In to Congress” with a conference on “Building a Spiritual Left.” The Teach-In and Spiritual Left conference will include a day long Community Organizers’ meeting. We plan to hold all of these events in mid to late September. 5. Through our email newsletter, Tikkunmail, Rabbi Lerner will continue to provide regular analysis of what’s going on in the Middle East as well as commentaries about the opportunities for spiritual politics in the United States today. In addition, beginning in early February, we will be sending out a specific Tikkun Community Mail, which will contain information relevant to Tikkun Community members. This email will only be sent out once every two to three weeks and will be as brief as we can make it, since we know everyone suffers from information overload these days. 6. In addition to what you receive in this organizers’ packet, if you need books, magazines, brochures or other materials, please let us know. 7. We will invite you to join the Tikkun Community Leaders yahoogroups listserv. This resource not only allows you to keep up to date with what’s happening with national Tikkun, but also provides a forum for local groups to connect with each other, provide support and share experiences and wisdom. What We’d Like from You 1. We’d like you to join our Tikkun Community Leaders yahoogroups listserv (we’ll send you an invitation so you can join) so that you can stay in the loop. We’d also like to have one person from your group commit to joining our monthly conference calls (held on the
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first Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m. Pacific Time – we’ll e-mail you notices of the calls and the call-in number). 2. We’d appreciate it if you’d update us on your activities once every couple of months, by phone or by e-mail. Tikkun staff would like to be a clearinghouse for sharing information about what local communities are doing, through the listserv, through monthly videos, and through monthly conference calls. By staying in touch with us, your experience and wisdom can be shared with other groups, as well. 3. Helping us grow the Tikkun Community is also an important role you can play as a community leader. We’d like your assistance with contacting new and renewing members of the Tikkun Community by phone or e-mail. In addition, we’d also like your help with getting members of your local group to join the National Tikkun Community. Because much of our work is public policy related and our influence is based on the number of constituents we represent, our membership numbers matter! We also rely upon yearly dues paying members for consistent financial support, so members are a key to the Tikkun Community’s survival. Steps for Starting a Local Tikkun Community
1. Getting Started The first step is to contact the Tikkun office in Berkeley and tell us where you live. We’ll be able to tell you if there is already a local Tikkun Community in your area, and, if not, we can help you get one started. We’ll send you out this start-up organizer’s packet, which will include: 2) sample agendas from other local Tikkun communities; 1) a Tikkun Community introductory video with Rabbi Lerner; 3) copies of Rabbi Lerner’s book Healing Israel/Palestine and The Geneva Accord 4) copies of the Main ideas of the Tikkun Community; 5) copies of the Tikkun brochure which includes membership information; 6) Suggested possible activities for local Tikkun Communities for 2005. If you give us a list of the zip codes in the area you’ll be drawing from, we will email you a list of Tikkun Community members and magazine subscribers to help get you started, and we can also send postcard invitations from the Berkeley office. Many people find, however, that their local Tikkun communities actually draw from a core of friends or people who have not necessarily been previously associated with Tikkun, but who are drawn to our message of tikkun olam – mending, repairing, healing and transforming to world. 2. Finding a space Many Tikkun Community leaders hold their first local Tikkun community meeting in their living rooms, while others prefer a location such as a church, synagogue, mosque, social hall, or school facility. We can email you sample flyers that you can adapt to post and hand out.
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3. Agenda It helps to have a sample agenda, even a very simple one. Some groups use a flip-chart or other means to post the agenda and assign the amount of time planned for each item. It is important to remember that there is no one “right” way to hold a meeting or organize a local Tikkun Community. Each group is different based on the personalities of the people who are drawn together to form a local group. Some groups rotate leadership and chairing of the meetings, some form steering committees for planning between meetings. Your group process will evolve over time. Remember, running meetings is a skill, not something we are born knowing how to do. As with any skill, each of us gets better with practice and becomes more confident, too! Facilitating a meeting means more than just moving the group through the agenda. When we chair a meeting, we are responsible for the well being of the group and the members in it. This means that a certain amount of attention and sensitivity must be brought to group dynamics and other process issues. 4. Opening the Meeting Many groups find that opening the meeting with a few moments of silence, an inspirational reading, or even a prayer or meditation period can help bring people into the room and ground them in the intention to create a spirit of tikkun olam for the meeting. 5. Getting to Know Each Other An activity that many groups find useful to help get to know each other is to have each person share what drew them to the Tikkun Community and to the idea of being part of a local Tikkun Community. It also helps to return to this activity periodically to check-in with each other as your group grows and develops over time. A local Tikkun Community is an organic, living thing, and groups grow and change as the individuals in them grow and change. 6. Showing the Video You may want to show the introductory video that comes with this packet at your first meeting as a way of having Rabbi Lerner “welcome” the members of your new group to the Tikkun Community.
7. Future Activities Brainstorming possible future activities helps the group begin to determine the interests of individual members. Our list of suggested activities might provide some ideas. Some groups begin by reading and discussing Rabbi Lerner’s Healing Israel/Palestine, Spirit
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Matters, or Politics of Meaning. Some local groups hold regular potlucks and movie nights. After a period of getting to know each other and the issues, several local Tikkun communities have begun outreach to other peace and social justice groups as well as adult education programs in synagogues or churches. Others begin to organize to develop relationships with their local elected officials, congress people and senators. Still others table at local events, bring speakers to their communities (including Tikkun speakers), and co-sponsor events with other local groups. Some groups plan to attend Tikkun’s national conferences together or organize regional conference with other peace and social justice groups. 8. Closing the meeting Most local Tikkun communities find that meeting once a month at a regularly scheduled day, time, and place creates continuity for the group. Before you close your first meeting, you’ll want to try to have your next one scheduled. Groups also frequently close their meetings like they opened them, with a circle, a moment of silence, a reading, or a song. 9. Staying in touch between meetings In addition, a number of local groups have decided to build their own Tikkun websites or start local listservs. We’ll be happy to help you get started using either of those communication tools.
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