Listen in to the virtual discussion with organizer contributors of Convergence Magazine’s just-released, must-read book “Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections”
The text recounts on-the-ground efforts that mobilized a record voter turnout in 2020. Event is co-sponsored by UNITE HERE, Working Families Party and Seed the Vote.
Contributors will discuss lessons from the book including what worked, what didn’t, and how they approached the challenge of both “going broad” to win a crucial election and “digging deep” to build a base for long-term progressive change.
Guests
Maurice Mitchell is a nationally-recognized social movement strategist and organizer for racial, social, and economic justice. Raised by Caribbean working-class parents in NY, Maurice began organizing as a teenager. After graduating from Howard University, he went on to work as an organizer for the Long Island Progressive Coalition, downstate organizing director for Citizen Action of NY, and Director of the NY State Civic Engagement Table. After Mike Brown was killed by police in Missouri, Maurice relocated to Ferguson to support work on the ground. Seeing the need for an anchor organization to provide strategic support and guidance to Movement for Black Lives activists, Maurice co-founded and managed Blackbird. In 2015, he helped organize the Movement for Black Lives convention in Cleveland. In 2018, Maurice took the helm of Working Families Party as National Director where he is applying his passion and experience to make the WFP the political home for a multi-racial working class movement.
Stephanie Greenlea is Executive Assistant to the Secretary Treasurer at UNITE HERE, where she also leads work in the Immigration, Diversity, and Civil Rights Department and the union’s Black Leadership Group. She has previously worked as an organizer, researcher, and a teacher. Raised in and around Atlanta, GA, she currently lives in New Haven, CT with her daughter.
Rose Mendelsohn is the Organizing Director for Seed the Vote. Rose discovered organizing on her college campus and eventually began working with Bay Resistance, one of the groups that helped to form Seed the Vote.