Director of Movement Building
To apply send a resume and cover letter to info@freedomstl.org!
Position Title: Director of Movement Building
Reports to: Executive Director
Location: Saint Louis City, MO
The Freedom Community Center (FCC) is a Black-led organization in North St. Louis founded to dismantle systems of oppression that inflict harm and trauma on Black communities in St. Louis City, particularly the police and the criminal punishment system. We ground ourselves in the knowledge that the Black survivors of St. Louis have the solutions to the question: What will keep us safe? We seek to build a community-based approach centered in power, healing, accountability, and repair. Given the resources to alleviate immediate economic needs, the space to facilitate communal healing, and the time to dream collectively of alternative approaches, our community of survivors will meaningfully address harm happening in St. Louis City at the individual and systemic level. We dismantle mass incarceration by modeling alternative responses to the criminal punishment system.
The current punitive approaches to violence such as police and incarceration do not prevent future violence, they create it. At FCC, we take a survivor centered approach to build solutions that interrupt violence at its root. In the place of violence, we make peace and build power. Our approach fosters accountability, healing, repair and transformation. The cornerstone of our peacemaking work is the Free Us Project which is made up of several different transformative justice processes. One of our transformative processes is a restorative justice program that seeks to intervene and work with people who are experiencing or perpetuating harm before they interact with the police or at the beginning of their interaction with the criminal punishment system. In addition, we intervene with individuals who have experienced a violent injury in order to promote repair and reduce the likelihood of retaliation or re-injury.
At FCC, we have an opportunity to seek a different path, one marked by healing, true accountability, and reparative solutions that will transform those involved so that they might participate in imagining an alternative future for themselves and our community. This work is materialized through our Free US project but also through our community organizing branch called Power Builders, where we build power within our community members. We interrupt violence both systemic and interpersonal by forging a different path toward reconciliation, transformation, healing, and freedom.
Position Summary:
The Director of Movement Building will bring seasoned organizing and advocacy leadership expertise, a nuanced understanding of violence and criminal justice, and a sophisticated analysis of racial oppression to lead our movement building work.
The primary responsibility of this leadership position is stewarding Freedom Community Center efforts in community movement building through leadership development, organizing, and coalition work. The Director will support the Executive Director in the development of a multi-year power-building strategy and work plans to build a survivor-centered Black liberation movement focused on transformative justice. This leader manages the Movement Building efforts of FCC including our canvassing, Powerbuilding monthly meetings, and Powerbuilding leadership development cohorts. The secondary responsibility of the Director will be to align FCCs movement of survivors with coalitions in St. Louis City and across the state to move forward key advocacy priorities identified in the power-building strategy. The ideal candidate will have a successful track record of results in community mobilization and possess a well-developed transformational and intersectional politic, grounded in critical race theory and/or liberative theologies.
Areas of Responsibility:
Organize target neighborhoods in North St. Louis through canvassing, outreach and community events with the goal of expanding FCC’s membership base.
Propose and implement, through the PowerBuilders monthly meeting, a plan for membership decision making power in our organization.
Organize our members to develop the reenvision and transform components of the Defund. Reenvision. Transform. campaign. This includes political education of members, strategy development for reenvisioning police and public safety conversations, and development of specific policy priorities to elevate alternatives to policing and incarceration.
Supervise a team of 2-3 community organizers.
Manage the training of members to be healers / restorative justice practitioners for FCC’s Peacemaking work.
Organize participants in FCC Peacemaking work to join the PowerBuilders Membership
Lead continuing and emerging community-based, direct-action abolitionist campaigns (e.g. No More Jail Deaths) targeted to address public safety, policing and incarceration in the city
What you would be doing now (these are examples and not an exhaustive list):
Developing canvassing strategies for organizing North St. Louis neighborhoods
Training and developing staff in their 1:1 organizing with potential members
Facilitating a meeting designed to come to shared understanding of potential alternatives to policing, why they work and how they could work in St. Louis
Leading direct actions
Who You Are & Keys to Success:
Ideal candidates bring a unique cross-set of experiences and skillsets, including:
Demonstrable passion for our mission and model, and social justice in general
A minimum of five (5) years of experience in community organizing, leadership development and winning policy campaigns
Subject matter expertise in criminal justice, violence, restorative justice, trauma, healing and victims’ services
Ability to manage a team of community organizers
Ability to engage directly and connect deeply with members of St. Louis Black and poor community specifically the northside (experience of violence, experience of legal system, experience of living on Northside).
Ability to create and implement membership recruitment and retention plans
Ability to lead and develop direct action strategy with people who have varying levels of experience with direct actions
Abolitionist and transformative justice framework
Well-developed people management and coaching skills, ideally with experience supporting directly impacted staff
Credibility and strong relationship building capacity with wide range of constituents
Survivors of violence, formerly incarcerated, and family members of incarcerated people strongly welcomed
Competencies:
Black liberatory and abolitionist analysis
Community awareness and prioritization of proximity to inform decision-making
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Relationship and consensus building with diverse stakeholders
Ability to build and successfully navigate in a fast-paced, outcomes-driven, and entrepreneurial environment
A well-organized individual with high ethical standards
A self-directed individual who is an independent thinker and a team player
This is a full-time exempt position. The Freedom Community Center offers competitive health benefits, dental and vision plans, flexible PTO, and life insurance.
Interested applicants should submit a resume, cover letter and writing sample to info@freedomstl.org.
In the cover letter, please address the following:
Why do you want to work for Freedom Community Center? Additionally, please share 1-2 experience(s) that highlight why you would be a strong candidate for the position.
No faxes or phone calls please. Applicants will be notified regarding whether or not they have been selected for an interview. Applications without cover letters will not be processed.
The Freedom Community Center is proud to be an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and actively seeks the candidacy of people of color, women, LGBTQIA people and formerly incarcerated individuals. We are committed to inclusive hiring and dedicated to diversity in our work and staff.