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Strategy Planning Insights from Leadership for a Changing World
Victoria Kovari
Metro Equity Project Director, Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES), Detroit, MI
Victoria Kovari leads a multiracial urban-suburban coalition to expand public transportation and job opportunities for metropolitan Detroit.
Read the full Leadership Profile
“We saw transportation as a unifying issue. Better regional public transit benefits people across geographical boundaries, it cuts across age, race, and income by improving access to jobs, health care, education. You must understand that we [Metro Detroit] are the largest region in the country by far without any form of rapid transit and we have a city bus system in a state of near total collapse, while one third of city residents do not own cars. Surveys of families on welfare have named transportation as the number one obstacle to getting and keeping a job. Just as important, we needed an issue that could bring both city and suburban congregations together, by benefiting both, and an issue that would raise MOSES' profile in the region and in the state as a powerful force of grass roots people to be reckoned with. And it's worked.”
Executive Director, Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest Lincoln, NE 2001 Leadership for a Changing World awardee
D. Milo Mumgaard and the Nebraska Appleseed Center plant the seeds of hope. Read the full Leadership Profile
“Nebraska Appleseed is a systemic law project, so we focus on how we can use our legal skills to work with community organizations on common agendas for social change. Our primary goal is to create a strong voice for those with little to no economic or political power. This means we focus on issues facing the working poor, welfare recipients, meatpacking workers, and similar communities here in Nebraska without any level of real political power. We decide to deal with issues like living wage ordinances and tax credit challenges by constantly interacting with organizations and low-income community leaders, and asking: What will make the most difference for the most people? What kind of strategy can be developed that will really change things for people? What will get the most attention and the most response?
I often describe Nebraska Appleseed's work as being in large part an end-run around the present political system. The present system is totally unresponsive to these communities and their critical issues, and short of a revolution or a few well-placed winners of the lottery, this will continue. How, then, to achieve policy changes that the political system will not deliver on its own? That's the level we operate on, one that demands we creatively find openings and leverage for organizers and advocates working for and with these communities. The process we go through to decide what, where, when and how is designed to be one that includes community leaders through our Advisory Councils and our direct involvement with community campaigns around the state. I feel very comfortable that our work is grounded in the very communities that need our type of legal and policy work the most.”
Chris Fitzsimon
Executive Director, Common Sense Foundation Raleigh, NC 2001 Leadership for a Changing World Finalist
“As for how we decide on issues, there are several criteria. One is that it is an issue that is being largely ignored by the policy establishment but affects quality of life for people left out or locked out of our policy debate. Secondly, it might be an issue that is widely discussed but only in the very narrow spectrum that defines the public discourse that remains so dominated by a handful of interests. Thirdly, we choose issues that speak to our fundamental mission to challenge the way decisions are made that affect people's lives.”
