Partner Spotlight
Erik Garcia currently works as the Organizing Director at Órale, an immigrant justice organization in Long Beach, CA. Erik and Órale’s Executive Director, Gaby Hernandez, have both worked with ADR to establish a set of labor standards for organizers in the Southern California region. We talked with Erik to hear more about his experience participating in this process and what he hopes it will change for the field.
Interview with Kara Park, All Due Respect Program Director. Text has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
KP: Hi Erik! Tell me a little bit about what first brought you to organizing and what keeps you in the work.
EG: I've always done community work, and I always say, like, out of necessity. I’ve fought a deportation since I was nine years old. And so I always had some urge to want to be involved. In middle school, I did anti-gang violence work, and through that, I got into the electoral world. [But] even when we won, because we did, it didn’t feel like change was happening. I saw more change organizing locally [as a volunteer] than I did in the years I did electoral work. Not to knock it, I do think that there’s still a role for it, it’s just organizing is where I found my heart.
I always say, too, that I’m grateful because I was radicalized in the work. That’s what keeps me there. I’m constantly growing, I’m constantly learning, and in organizing, even though we lose more often than we win, it’s still fulfilling. Organizing truly is fulfilling for me because even though I have all these years in the system and no control over my circumstances individually, there’s something we can do collectively. It’s fulfilling to know that we can move collectively for policy gains when so many of us individually stand no chance against this system.
KP: What does a "good organizing job" mean to you?
EG: The work has to be fulfilling. As an employee, you can’t always control that, so as an organizer, you have to know what will fulfill you. It has to pay well, a living wage. And there’s so many skills that are learned on the job, and a lot of it is hard to teach, even through some of the more robust organizing trainings. So I think some acknowledgment of the skills it takes to continue to do the job, of what that role’s contribution is to the overall organization and the health of the organization. Especially for an organization like ours, we’re membership-based, so it’s important that we have healthy communication with our membership. In Spanish, we have this saying that translates to English roughly like, “The promise is a debt.” So any promise we make through our programming, we owe, and we really try to stick to that. I think a good organizing job is one that promotes integrity and what it takes to healthily interact with people, because we're interfacing with so many people constantly.
Something that we try to do, too, is being flexible and adaptable with workloads. We work evenings often, so being able to flex time or, speaking aspirationally, paying overtime for what it takes to work evenings and weekends. And there's a balance, I think, that can be struck between deliverables that need to be met with autonomy and creativity in the work. I think [good organizing jobs] give people the freedom and autonomy to be creative in the work because we know what has to be done, but how can people still make that work their own?
KP: Through participating in some organizer conversations and then representing your organization in our cohort, you've been part of co-creating a set of compensation and benefits standards for organizers in Southern California. What's one part of the standards you are especially excited about?
EG: Pay, if I’m being honest. If we're able to communicate to funders and other stakeholders the importance of sustainability of the organizers—to say, yes, you're invested in the work and that's great, but it’s also about investing in the organizer—I'm really excited about that, because it's a different layer to our fundraising. We don't often say, hey, we really need to sustain our organizers because they've done X, Y and Z and like, that work has been able to be done because of this amazing person that we have on board. That's a different strategy. I’ll also add benefits. When conversations like these come up, during enrollment, you think about it, but then other than that, [not] day to day. So I’m excited about the benefits, especially for folks to be able to take care of themselves within the role.
Along the lines of wellness, it would be dope if down the line, on top of investing in salaries, funders could issue “bonuses” or whatever we want to call them, that’s not coming from the general fund. That would be helpful, I think. And the reason I’m thinking about that is I think about emergency funds, especially for young organizers. To be honest about where our organizers are coming from, if they’re from the communities that we’re serving, folks are back paying rent, or health bills. So having benefits include cash assistance that folks could tap into would help them to get back on their feet, because a lot of people burn out before they’re even able to get a salary job with benefits. I was 7 years deep [in organizing] before I finally got a salaried organizing job that wasn’t based on limited funding. Acknowledging that organizers come from those circumstances, it would be helpful for organizations to be able to offer that.
KP: What is Órale doing related to the standards that you think others can learn from?
EG: Benefits are one of them. For us, we’re fiscally sponsored, which has its challenges, but one of the benefits is having access to a larger benefits package. We often try to periodically remind organizers to remember to use their benefits, especially because we recognize that, like, our pay isn't where we want it to be. And so where else can we [supplement] that? Subscribing to a better benefits package is one way.
We also have good time off policies, but because folks are so busy, they don't take the time off. So one thing that we've tried to do is schedule time off. The whole office is closed, so nobody has to feel guilty about using PTO. We do one week in the summer and in December we do three. Another thing is that our ED has a fundraising strategy specific to staff wellness, so for the last couple of years, she's been able to fundraise money specifically for wellness. We don't have money to consistently put it in the budget, but it's a funding priority separate from all of the other work that we're doing, and that’s making it a priority to pull in funding for us to program wellness activities internally.
KP: What's your hope for how the Southern CA organizing ecosystem will have changed in the next ten years?
EG: I hope there's a way for us to outline different ways for people to grow within the role. Oftentimes our organizational structures are a community organizer or some entry level organizer, a supervisor, and then a manager and a director. Up to this point, unless you branch out into policy, for example, or campaign management—which is often policy—there's not much more [space] to grow. And so I'm hopeful that we're able to figure out some way to come up with structures that reflect different growth, some recognition of titles and responsibilities that go just beyond the three. Speaking from experience, I had a previous Director of Organizing position that paid $55,000, and it was like, I’m already a director, so there’s not much [direction] to go. And I’m not trying to be an ED. I like organizing, my heart is with organizing, you know? So my hope is for us to figure out how to recognize and compensate different roles and growth paths for organizers within organizations.