Durham Beyond Policing is looking for an emerging leader local to the Durham community to serve as District Organizer leading our Community Participatory Action Research Project. You will work in collaboration with Durham Beyond Policing staff, member leadership, advisory board, and partner organizations. We are seeking candidates who are connected to Durham communities, and who align with DBP’s mission, vision and values.
Durham Beyond Policing (DBP) is a grassroots abolitionist formation devoted to the end of policing in all forms, and the creation of systems of safety rooted in care and community accountability. We are pro-Black, we are Black and Brown-led, and we trust the leadership of Black women, trans, and gender non-conforming people. We are survivors of state-sanctioned, interpersonal, racial, sexual, and gender-based violence, and these experiences root our commitment to abolition.
As District Organizer, you will lead several critical functions including organizing around important issues, such as fighting over-policing, surveillance, and incarceration, and creating opportunities for our people to thrive. You will be tasked with leading community outreach, base-building, skilling up and growing through leadership development and professional training opportunities.
Our Community Participatory Action Research Project (CPAR) is a new endeavor by Durham Beyond Policing, deepening our practice of listening to our fellow residents to develop solutions to the challenges our neighborhoods face. Community participatory action research is a collective process of investigation, empowerment, and action. The people most affected by the problems investigate and analyze the issues, sometimes inviting in the help of additional experts, and ultimately act together to bring about meaningful, long-term solutions.
In your role, you will assist Durham community residents in your neighborhood in developing and implementing alternatives to policing as a collective project. Community participatory action research is an approach to creating new forms of knowledge and practice that center collaboration and creativity. In Durham, we envision using community participatory action research to generate models that can address harm and violence without policing.
We will use community participatory action research to create at least one intervention to harm and violence impacting our communities. You will be engaging your neighbors in an iterative process of identifying pressing safety issues, critical needs, and resources necessary to build trusted systems of safety and community accountability. It is essential that the people organizing the research belong to the communities, have trusted relationships with community members, and have a vested interest in building systems that will keep their communities safe. We want to work with communities that have experienced a history of over-policing, and work together in finding a solution to root causes.
Hours: 30hrs/week, mostly 12pm-6pm Monday-Friday with regular evening meetings and occasional weekends.
Desired Start Date: November 1, 2022, with a 90-day evaluation.
Compensation: The salary for this position is $42,000. This is a 12 month, 1099 contract position. DBP offers a flexible, affirming and encouraging work environment; health reimbursement stipend, PTO and vacation.
Application deadline: Position open until filled
Experience
You are ready to lead long range planning to fulfill Durham Beyond Policing’s vision, and support our incredible team of hardworking workers and volunteers to actualize it.
You are eager to engage neighbors and community members in learning together and building an intervention to harm and violence that impacts our communities.
You embody leadership through love, listening, respect, and a bold commitment to liberation.
When you represent Durham Beyond Policing, you honor the humanity of those you interact with. The way you practice rigor and care in relationships establishes DBP as a respected community organization and a trusted organizational partner.
You do your work through a lens of justice, liberation, inclusion, and accessibility. You have a transparent, fair, collaborative leadership style. You embrace the opportunity to give and receive constructive feedback. You are clear on your commitments and you follow through. You care for yourself in ways that allow you to sustain consistency, encouragement, and inspiration.
Preferred Experience
- Experience in community organizing, or union work (preferred but not required)
- Strong leadership qualities and a positive attitude towards working with people from different generations and backgrounds
- Strong partnership skills, able to establish relationships with community leaders, residents and fellow staff
- Influence and trust within your community and or neighborhood
- High degree of emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills
- Experience and/or commitment learning about transformative justice, conflict transformation, and community accountability
- Excellent communication skills and responsiveness
- Excellent written, analytical, oral, organizational, and time management skills
- A commitment to the work of Durham Beyond Policing and readiness to grow and learn with the membership
Required skills and abilities
- English-speaking, Bilingual a plus!
- Strong interpersonal communication skills and commitment to building authentic relationships
- Experience in managing event logistics, eager to be the first there and last to leave
- Confidence and steady patience while collaborating with others
- Ability to manage multiple projects, events and logistical needs
- Self-motivated
- Ability to meet deadlines and collaborate with others
- Joyful about working in a Black and Brown-led multiracial organization
- Reliable transportation, as this position is in-person and not remote.
Supervision
- Reports to Co-Director of People & Organizing
- Works in close partnership with Co-Coordinator of CPAR & Popular Education and Co-District Organizer
- Accountable to your CPAR Co-District Organizer, staff, DBP membership body and leadership
Responsibilities include
- Assisting Durham community residents in your neighborhood in developing and implementing alternatives to policing as a collective project.
- Being an advocate and leader in your community around addressing interpersonal harm and police violence
- Engaging your neighbors in an iterative process of identifying pressing safety issues, critical needs, and resources necessary to build trusted systems of safety and community accountability.
- Facilitating meeting spaces, people’s assemblies and town halls with residents and other stakeholders
- Assisting with setting up/cleaning up meeting spaces
- Attending weekly meetings with DBP staff
- Creating weekly reports to keep track of ongoing work
- Build relationships with community members
- District Organizers will be provided with a high quality work laptop and hotspot. You will be responsible for keeping equipment in good working condition as it will be in your possession at all times for the duration of your contract.
About Durham Beyond Policing
Durham Beyond Policing (DBP) is a grassroots abolitionist formation devoted to the end of policing in all forms, and the creation of systems of safety rooted in care and community accountability. We are pro-Black, we are Black and Brown-led, and we trust the leadership of Black women, trans, and gender non-conforming people. We are survivors of state-sanctioned, interpersonal, racial, sexual, and gender-based violence, and these experiences root our commitment to abolition.
We are working to defund and abolish the Durham police, the sheriff’s department, and the jails, while simultaneously redistributing public resources and funding towards the institutions and culture shifts necessary to keep us all truly safe. Ultimately, we are building a beloved community where those who have committed and experienced harm are never disposable, and where policing, surveillance, and incarceration are no longer part of how we relate to each other.
Currently, we have a small staff and a large team of amazing, active volunteers who power our work. Our volunteer work is themed around Arts and Culture (design, printmaking, street art, community engagement projects); Communications (press releases, earned media, op-ed authorship, social media); Funds (grants, events, crowdfunding, budgeting); Advocacy (meetings with electeds, observing public meetings, tracking campaign opportunities); Research (literature review, writing reports/op-eds, presenting recommendations); and Outreach (base building, mobilizations, events, workshops, demonstrations, direct action).
Our volunteer-driven work will continue to play a crucial role in continuing the work of Durham Beyond Policing in coming years, and we are looking for staff who understand the role of social, economic, and environmental justice organizations in building transformative movements. We’ve seen the nonprofit industrial complex replace mass-based organizing with overworking a few paid staff to do the bidding of funders and this dynamic damages the work. We seek to build the opposite– staff members working a healthy work-life balance in ways that enhance coordination, strengthen participatory democracy practices, and increase organizational follow through by cultivating and supporting member leadership, with the majority of contributions coming from committed grassroots donors.
Because of our particular focus in Black communities, communities of color, and working class communities in Durham, we are seeking candidates with familiarity and strong relationships in these communities.
For more information on Durham Beyond Policing, please visit www.durhambeyondpolicing.org
On hiring in a movement
Durham Beyond Policing has been a powerful grassroots formation composed of a large number of mostly unpaid visionaries since 2016. We know applying for jobs in our home city and within a justice movement can feel complicated. We will receive more qualified candidates than we can afford to hire and we will have to make very difficult choices. We hope that our hiring process introduces us to wonderful collaborators, even if we are unable to hire everyone. We intend for our hiring processes to build bridges and forge new relationships.
The truth is that movement organizations cannot win on staffing alone. We staff to improve our coordination and effectiveness, but we win by successfully growing our base of Durham residents from every walk of life engaged in participatory decision-making, with people from marginalized and exploited communities at the leadership center.
Benefits
- Health reimbursement stipend
- Thirteen paid holidays and 24 days of paid time off that is accrued on a monthly basis
- Paid and unpaid leave policies detailed in the personnel handbook.
Category: Exempt employee
To apply
If you require reasonable accommodation during your application process, please let the hiring committee know.
Submit the following to hiring@durhambeyondpolicing.com:
Subject line: “CPAR District Organizer _____Community application from <YOUR NAME>”
In the body of the email include:
- cover letter describing your interest in the position and any relevant experience
- attached resume
- three references, including a recent supervisor and colleague (name, phone, email, relationship to you)
Black people, indigenous people, people of color, persons with disabilities, women, trans and gendernonconforming people, LGBTQ+ people, and people with lived experience surviving criminalization, repression, policing or jails and prisons, are strongly encouraged to apply. There are no formal education or degree requirements for this role.
Durham Beyond Policing is fiscally sponsored by Southern Vision Alliance (SVA). We have programmatic independence, are supported by SVA’s administrative care for sponsored projects, and SVA’s board has ultimate fiscal and legal responsibility for Durham Beyond Policing’s actions.
Durham Beyond Policing and Southern Vision Alliance are equal opportunity employers. We recruit and hire qualified candidates on the basis of their qualifications and without regard to race, class, religion, sex, gender expression or identity, pregnancy status, marital status, or family responsibilities, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, or any basis prohibited by law.