This site is built to support my continued work in building a movement for a just and thriving planet. Whether you would like to support me or not, please take a minute and look at my proposal for Community Supported Organizing.
Community Supported Organizers (CSOs)
Millions of people are showing up to be part of a movement and need coordination and support. Call it unity, inclusivity, or community, the strength of “the people” is mass cooperation. Helping coordinate mass numbers requires also increasing our organizer population. The CSO model can respond quickly to sudden groundswells like Standing Rock, Occupy, important local events and frontline organizing efforts. Instead of building new non-profit organizations, a heavier financial and administrative lift, the CSO is supported by mobilizing their personal network. Combining flexibility with tax-exempt benefits, this brings broader accountability but less obligation to large foundations, a complement to grant-funded nonprofits. In my experience this has worked well with the strength of longer-standing institutions, affording the chance to support larger projects and mobilizations with a varying groups.
There’s a huge need for all hands on deck in this moment, and many of us are trying to step up to the challenge. I have coalition building experience, work well in a crisis, and have an extensive network nationally and locally. I think CSO is an innovative and efficient way to support solidarity work and strategic organizing in our community. It is important to note that I am working with a variety of dedicated organizers and we feel it is very important not to compete with one another for resources. All the work I’m involved in depends on the effort and leadership of the many organizers and volunteers I have the good fortune to know.
What this is for?
I work with teens, retirees, migrant workers, nonprofits, you name it, in a long list of organizations and informal groups in VT and Nationally. I’ve always made a living as a carpenter. Now, with such a steady flow of organizing opportunities, I can’t disengage from social justice work. To quit being a carpenter I need the help of my community. I need to keep organizing protests, civil disobedience actions, movement strategy, and coalition building. I need to contribute to a mass social movement, for my kid’s sake, and not look back.
BIO / WORK HISTORY
I was raised in the Northeast Kingdom of VT in the ’80s, which has given me an understanding of class and economy that I carry through the rest of my work, including being a working single parent myself these days. I returned home to Vermont in 2014, having lived and built my community in Texas, Hawai’i, Northern California, Oregon, NYC & The Hudson Valley. I was a co-founder Portland, OR Art and Revolution, the Food Security Roundtable (NY, MA & VT), and The Watershed Center in Millbrook, NY, and the Make Action Arts here in VT.
I’ve also been involved in ecology and forests defense in the Redwoods, rural Oregon, the Everglades, the fracking fields, the rail yards and on Wall St.
I hope this moves you to help me out, because I’m honestly hesitant to give web-savvy law-enforcement this thorough a map of my activity, but I’ll tell you I am proud to have been very involved in the Global Justice Movement, Eco-Defense, Occupy Wall Street, the Food Justice Movement, the National Lawyers Guild, Radical Arts and Performance organizing, and other direct action and coalition building work since 1998. I’ve worked the organizing team for a two Earth First! continental rendezvous, the FTAA protests in Windsor, Ontario in 2001 and Miami in 2003, the Cancun WTO protest of 2003, Occupy Wall Street demos and projects in NYC, Flood Wall Street, and the annual VT actions in October to Stop the VT Fracked Gas Pipeline, the Make Climate Carnival, and other smaller projects. I have also helped organize actions and strategy at numerous other global justice and campaign-based events. These actions are not just splashy events, they are also a key way to get a great number of people working together, refusing to be dominated, and discovering their freedom to resist domination.
Thank you, sincerely, for reading my pitch to become a Community Supported Organizer.
Please stay tuned for more posts to come, and let me know if you have any question or suggestions about the work we’re doing.
Yours in the vision of a thriving future,
Henry “Hambone” Harris
CSO
BARNRAISER 