Organizing

Rooted by Our Ancestors, Powered by Our Youth.

Theory of Change

The PUSH Buffalo Organizing team knows that when we organize to build power with real people in our communities, people listen. The Organizing Team works to be rooted by our ancestors and powered by our youth by building leaders to stop the bad and build the new for a just and equitable transition for all of us. We know that climate and housing justice are not separate issues but are rooted in an extractive economy. We strive to focus our campaign attentions at the roots of our crisis so that we can holistically build a regenerative, living economy that is rooted in care, sacredness and joy.  Together we engage in national, state and local campaigns that work to draw down money and power to our people because we know that “if we are not prepared to govern, we are not prepared to win”.

Values Filter

In July of 2019, the PUSH Buffalo Organizing Team held a five-day reflection and strategy retreat. During our time together we identified our collective values and worked to come into alignment on how to best use our values to make decisions within our team. This filter will be our decision making check-in tool when we make decisions on campaigns, projects, events or other important pieces of work within the Organizing team. The intention of this filter is to help to make our work and decision making systems more horizontal and transparent as we move into a practice of collective work and responsibility. As our comrades at Movement Generation so rightfully say, “if we’re not prepared to govern, we’re not prepared to win”.

The inspiration for our values filter comes from Movement Generation and their Just Transition framework which articulates a set of values that resources must pass through as we divest from the power and money of the Extractive Economy into the Regenerative Economy we are building together.

This filter will change to fit our time, place and conditions throughout the life of the Organizing Team of PUSH Buffalo. This filter also serves as a point of aspiration in our practice together as a team and within the larger organization of PUSH Buffalo–we are constantly growing, changing, learning, practicing and figuring it out.

Upcoming Organizing Events

Full Organizing Calendar

PUSH’s Organizing team organizes on the West Side of Buffalo for a more equitable, resilient and just Buffalo for all. We believe that we need to both stop the bad that has been done to our communities while we also dream of and build the new that we need to survive and thrive in a new economy.

PUSH works on two major issues, though they are deeply connected to each other and so much more: Climate and Housing Justice

Read about the Buffalo Tenants Bill of Rights

Seven Generations Principle

  1. Will the decision we are making today create a sustainable world for seven generations forward? Will it reverberate to heal our ancestors seven generations back?
  2. “If it’s not soulful, it’s not strategic”
  3. Does this decision help to create real community power by drawing down money, power and other resources? Does it set us up for structural reforms that will get us closer to our “north stars”?
  4. Does this decision move the needle towards real solutions being more politically realistic? Does it work to expose that the current system does not serve us?
  5. Does this decision help to build or strengthen our movement infrastructure and collective practices of liberation?
  6. Does this decision allow for more space for communities of care, dignity and joy?

Race and Gender Justice

  1. Does this decision center racial and gender justice in a radical and visionary way?
  2. Are we centering the voices and decision making power of people of color, women, queer and trans people? 
  3. Does this decision work to chip away at the culture of white supremacy?
  4. Does this decision get to the roots of oppression? Are we being explicit about race, gender and class? 
  5. Does this decision value all of the types of labor that is involved in it? How will this shift power and create more communities of care? 
  6. What is the impact of this decision? How and who made the decision?

Intention, Purpose & Practice

  1. How will we govern what we win? 
  2. Does this decision work to change practice and policy?
  3. “If we’re not prepared to govern, we’re not prepared to win”
  4. Does this decision center real people as real policy makers? Are grassroots and frontline voices given a seat at the table in a real way?
  5. We can do real research on who has real power
  6. Does this national or state work work to empower local living economies? What is the local impact? 
  7. Does this decision change the narrative and create space for us to struggle on the field of ideology and worldview? Are we challenging dominant narratives and hegemony to create radical possibilities of liberation?

Organic Knowledge & Experience

  1. Does this decision uplift, resource and center the organic knowledge, wisdom, skills and talents of our people? 
  2. Does this decision celebrate the talents and cultures of our peoples? 
  3. Does this decision move forward the solutions being practiced and proposed by frontline and grassroots leaders? 
  4. Does this decision allow for our communities to have choices, a place of practice and an opportunity to learn and grow?

Leadership Development

  1. Does this decision build the power of our organization, our movements and for ourselves?
  2. Does this decision create opportunities for leaders to grow and deepen their skills and political analysis? 
  3. Does this decision create space for our leaders to tell their real stories with deep vulnerability, care and courage? 
  4. Does this decision treat our leaders as whole people and not just numbers?

Healing Justice

  1. We believe that we are worth more than the worst things that we have ever done and that have ever happened to us. We commit to being in a practice of restorative and transformative justice. 
  2. We believe in honoring and holding the trauma of our lived experiences of intersectional oppression. We know that none of us are free until all of us are free, healed and living in our dignity. 
  3. We believe in being rooted in love, trust and unity
  4. We believe that healing is not linear nor should it be done “away” from community. We can and must create possibilities and practices of community care and healing. 
  5. We believe in the power that is created through relationships and that relationships are the DNA of organizing. Relationships can be transformative and create new possibilities. 
  6. We believe that part of liberation and healing justice is the liberation of our radical imaginations. We will work to identify and push away the dominant narratives we are taught about what is possible and move towards what we really need.

Partner Organizations, Past Campaigns, and Resources

Media

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“$2 Million to Promote Affordable Housing,” The Buffalo News, Mark Sommer, August 9, 2006.

“City Homes Feel Ill Wind From Albany,” The Buffalo News, Donn Esmonde, July 21, 2006.

“PUSH Puts Famous Face on Eyesores,” The Buffalo News, Mark Sommer, July13, 2006.

“Buffalo’s Blight Fight,” The Bond Buyer, Robert Whalen, June 13, 2006.

“Study Faults Pataki for Lack of Housing Opportunities,” Mark Johnson, Associated Press, June 8, 2006.

“Probe Urged of Bond Sale for Derelict Property,” Mark Sommer, Buffalo News, May 19, 2006.

“Fighting Neighborhood Blight,” WGRZ, May 18, 2006.

“Activists Push to Meet with Housing Officials,” Mark Sommer, Buffalo News, April 14, 2006.

“Here Comes the Neighborhood,” Geoff Kelly, Artvoice, March 23, 2006.

“Group Seeks Action on Vacant Homes,” Deidre Williams, Buffalo News, March 24, 2006.

“Activists PUSHing State Housing Agency to Take Action On Vacant Properties,” WIVB News, March 23, 2006.

“PUSH House Community Clean-up A Success,” Deidre Williams, Buffalo News, January 29,2006.

“Group Advocates Urban ‘Homesteading’,” Brian Meyer, Buffalo News, January 19, 2006.

A Harvard-Educated Native Son Returns to Make a Difference,” Mark Sommer, Buffalo News, January 1,2006.

“Community Group Looking for Housing Reform in Buffalo,” WKBW News, November 13, 2005.

“Pushing for a Better Buffalo,” Aron Singer and Christopher Ahearn, Generation Magazine, 1 November, 2005.

City Foreclosure Auction Draws $925,000 in Opening Day Bids,” Brian Meyer, Buffalo News, October 25, 2005.

“Out-of-control Neighborhoods Pose Challenge for Next Mayor,” Deidre Williams, Buffalo News, 11 October, 2005.

“Auctioning of Properties from City Slumlord Stirs Call for Accountability,” Deidre Williams, Buffalo News, 22 July 2005

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