Real ED of the LA NPIC : is a very occasional series (re)counting some of the things no one told me about being an Executive Director in a Non Profit in Los Angeles.
Coalition work is the hardest work and it’s even harder in LA
I’ve said this so many times in my 10 years working at a non-profit here. Earlier this week I said it to some staff members who were new to some of the backroom machinations. It’s budget and bill season in Sacramento and in Los Angeles. My organization is involved in both budgets and bills and we are often asked our position on certain bills.
There is one budget and bill action that we are a standalone no on , especially among a number of coalitions we are a part of. It’s not the first time we’ve been the lone no support on something. Usually we are a no when it comes into conflict with our organizational values and/or when we disagree with the strategy. It’s not personal except that the personal and political are very aligned in a woman of color led organization.
One time when we wouldn’t endorse a bill, the Executive Director of the org leading the campaign called me and had the org’s attorney on the line so they could explain the bill to me.
I do know how to read. And yes - they were (are) men. One is a white man.
So when I explained the politics behind a bill we were not supporting to the younger/greener staff -one cried. I broke her heart she told me later. She wasn’t mad at me but rather just disappointed at what saw when saw what the great and powerful oz - er what progressive California politics can look like.
I hugged her and told her I hope this didn’t discourage her - that we could still work and be within our values and be proud of our integrity - and I also reminded her that this - non-profity way of doing things wasn’t going to make any of us free. So to make sure she found other outlets and ways.
I was lucky that I entered organizing not as a job but rather as a disruptive force and my mentor used his non-profit job to give resources to the grassroots movement. He used his office as a school for teenagers like me to learn how to run campaigns centered by the most impacted - in that case - Black and Brown and Asian parents of young men murdered by the police and other forms of racist violence. It was in that context that I learned how to work in coalition and how to hash out differences across race, gender, sexuality, identity, language. But that was New York City where we had a direct way about things.
California’s liberal veneer is one grounded in passive aggression, where other women of color directors will ask that you engage in mediations with them because you’re angry and mean and make them cry (especially when they stalk your social media accounts and blogs - ::waves::). Here coalitions are often - not always- but often paved by organizational promiscuity with the state they (we) claim to be fighting.