Occupying All the Way to Idaho
One group’s grassroots organizing helps lay a foundation for new occupations
On September 17, Occupy Wall Street began in New York City. Ten days later, Tahirih Cahill, mother of two young children here in Boise, Idaho and wife of one of my son’s childhood friends, logged into Facebook, set up a page, named it OccupyBoi, and sent it to a dozen friends. Tahirih heard about Occupy Wall Street (OWS) through a Wisconsin friend and wondered why she heard nothing about something this big and exciting in the local or national news. She decided to set up a meeting on Friday in her home. Her brother-in-law, Travis, connected with students at Boise State.
Overnight 600 people had signed on. An organizer with Food Not Bombs/Snake River Alliance called, they reserved the band shell at Julia Davis Park, got together for four hours, and planned the agenda for the meeting. We borrowed ideas from OWS and tapped into classic organizing tools such as the strategy chart from the Midwest Academy. And suddenly we were off and running. Folks showed up with blankets and chairs and we began plotting democracy right then and there in the park. We formed public education, direct action, media, legal, general assembly (GA) and other committ ees. On October 5, we held a march and rally on the statehouse steps, which despite the rain, out-shined events in larger cities.
Things grew quickly. One hundred fifty people joined that first General Assembly.Over 400 att ended the October 5 rally & march to the Capitol steps. And we soon had over 2,000 “likes” on Facebook—and showing up to various events.
Transformational social change, what The Interfaith Alliance of Idaho has been working toward for the past 13 years, has been using all the tried and true tools of organizing: measuring progress by expanding our base of civically active folks who understand what it means to be inclusive, democratic and progressive. While OccupyBoi might have started just a few months ago and grown rapidly in that time, we know much of its energy has been built on the foundation of organizing.
Base-building work continues
In mid-September I had just finished The Interfaith Alliance’s fall newsletter. The year has been filled with plenty of activity as we all scurried around hoping to transform public policy for the common good, which to us means a sane and balanced fiscal policy, safe places for children of all ages, human rights, fair employment practices, protecting the last vestiges of our public education system, protecting our First Amendment rights of freedom to worship as one wishes or not. The year has also been filled with fear: the fears of losing all the civil rights and social progress folks have made over the last 60 years, of the dismantling of democracy and of losing hope for a life that never existed.
Over the years we have traveled the state and held dozens of workshops. We have held vigils and rallies for human and civil rights. We organized local “Democracy Action Circles,” hosted candidate forums, organized get out the vote efforts and held fabulous annual gatherings with great speakers and trainers.
We shared our organizer to help start the Idaho Interfaith Round Table Against Hunger, facilitated the formation of Interfaith Sanctuary Homeless/Housing Services and nurtured leaders statewide—particularly our young adult activists in Pocatello. We have stood up and fought valiantly to protect our undocumented friends and neighbors, and we have had to sadly mourn the loss of those the system deported from their families and our lives.
We brought together 200 people from many diverse faiths for the “Healing Our Future 9/11/2011” gathering. Shortly after, we launched “Building an Inclusive Interfaith Movement for Future Generations,” a program that brought together elders and young adults to discuss and plan how to strengthen the progressive interfaith movement in Idaho and to expand the intergenerational base and leadership.
Movement interrupts
And then it happened—in the midst of our busy schedules and continuing programs. As Naomi Klein put it in an article title, “Occupy Wall Street: The
Most Important Thing in the World Now.”
I watched Occupy Idaho on Facebook as Occupy Idaho Falls, Sandpoint, Coeur d’Alene, Rexburg, Moscow, Pocatello, Sun Valley, Ketchum, Nampa began popping up. In Idaho Falls, the largest city in eastern Idaho but still a small one with a population of just over 50,000, organizers told of 150 people at their rally, General Assembly meetings, committees formed. In smaller Pocatello, as in other towns, many of the folks joining the movement haven’t been part of any organizations and have never participated in any form of direct action.
“The most inspiring, encouraging thing,” said Tahirih, one of the organizers of OccupyBoi, “is the number of my peers who had been apathetic, unaware, finally seeing the validity in being active in a social movement that will affect their lives and the lives of those around them.”
Strong foundation
The foundation Occupy Idaho stands on has been built in large part by the trained leaders we have in communities across the state who have, step by step, brick by brick, been building this new progressive movement from its amazing beginning. In Pocatello, The Interfaith Alliance had mentored students at Idaho State University, helped send them to Western States Center’s Activists Mobilizing for Power (AMP) Camp, shared in training at Camp Wellstones and United Vision for Idaho’s Camp Democracies in Idaho Falls, Nampa and Coeur d’Alene. These trained leaders then managed political campaigns, created new organizations, including Gay-Straight Alliances in high schools and 2Great4Hate when the Aryans reappeared. They reactivated the Idaho Young Democrats in a sea of ultra-conservatism. The young leaders mentored more young leaders, and the history of progressive organizing on campus and beyond exponentially expands.
I listened incredulously to talking heads on the news asking why Occupy Wall Street has so many issues. John Nichols from The Nation summed it up perfectly on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, “Well, when you’ve got Occupy Pocatello going on, in Idaho, you know something is happening. And this is Idaho, and it’s tough. You’re a brave protester in Idaho.”
How will The Interfaith Alliance work with these new organizations trying on democracy and consensus? We will listen and honor the hard work they are doing as they create a new movement, offer to share skills and facilitate popular education workshops on the issues they want. We will learn from each other about creative new ways to transform our institutions, to change our world as we know it into the communities that are good and nurturing for our children, our elders, ourselves—so eager and hopeful
to salvage our democracy.
As for the future? Well, we are already looking towards our annual gathering in January, “Building an Inclusive Intergenerational Movement,” and things couldn’t be coming together any better! And we will continue to support and be involved in the exciting work of OccupyBoi.
And as Tahirih, my intuitive young friend who used her social networking skills to spark the Occupy movement in the most unlikely of places puts it, “I can’t even begin to speculate where this will lead, but I feel certain this is a turning point in the landscape of the US and the world—this first global political awakening in history, which I find phenomenal.”
