A DAY IN THE LIFE: Head Start Organizer
Head Start organizing campaigns are alive and well in Ohio and Pennsylvania. But there are a growing number of others that are being built from the ground up. The following is an up-close look at the daily rigors of jump-starting an organizing campaign.
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Candace Fries (pronounced “freeze”) started her campaign in a parking lot in the economically challenged south side of Fort Wayne.
She started with nothing. After inconspicuously approaching Head Start workers in parking lots, she progressed to visiting them on playgrounds, never drawing any attention to herself. She was able to collect 90 names. A lead organizer, Fries and her staff have confirmed 60 addresses and completed 40 home visits as of press time. Out of some 30 home visits she personally has conducted, Fries says she’s only had two negative responses.
She attributes much of her success to the AFSCME in Motion (AIM) organizing model and her lessons learned at an AFSCME-sponsored Lead Organizer in Training seminar she attended in Maryland. “Every campaign is not going to be identical,” she reports, “but it’s good to have a plan that you can work from and not reinvent the wheel.”
Making time for others. The wife of an Allen County, Ind., deputy sheriff and the mother of three boys, Fries has to juggle her time. Why does she work full time to organize Head Start workers? “I like to talk to people,” she understates. Sometimes she gets so involved in her work that her organizing partners have had to give her subtle clues to wrap things up. “I stayed so long at one place that the homeowner asked me to stay for dinner,” Fries recalls.
Fries and her fellow organizers operate out of a satellite office in a building owned by another labor union. It’s late Tuesday afternoon and Fries and the organizing staff are mapping out a plan for home visits that will last well into the evening hours. Fellow organizer Ron Mofield and Council 62 Organizing Director Michelle Martin are dispatched to residences outside the city limits. Fries is going to work alone on the south side of town.
Fries swears by house calls. “If you don’t eyeball a person, you don’t know if they’re sincere,” she commands. “You can’t see and feel a response over the telephone.”
Patience is a virtue. No one ever said organizing was easy. Just one day with Fries is testimony that it isn’t. She’s lined up six home visits and yet only one worker is at home. At one residence, a teen answers the door and says his mom isn’t home. His body language suggests she may be lurking somewhere in the house. Plus, there are two cars in the driveway, confirming Fries’ suspicion that the worker doesn’t want to be bothered.
But the one worker who is home turns out to be a gem. As Fries approaches the door, a vicious, leashed dog that looks like a cross between Lassie and Rin Tin Tin is barking and jumping about frantically. A woman opens the door and exclaims, “I’m glad you’re here. They told me you would be coming.”
This worker is unhappy because the Head Start she works for is marred with fiscal and safety problems due to shoddy management. “I love children, but I’m tired of this. If we can get a union we can fight this thing,” she declares.
The woman volunteers to become part of the organizing committee. She’s agreed to get a list of more workers, and she gives Fries some leads on workers who’ve been hard to track down.
Staying committed. “You can’t get discouraged too soon when it looks like you have a mountain in front of you,” Fries advises. “If you start from the ground up like we have, you have to look at it as an adventure.
“The best part of organizing is seeing people realize what they can do,” she continues. “We have a society that breathes complacency and apathy. You get nothing if you don’t try. It takes a union organizer to help people realize their potential.”
By Jimmie Turner
