Community Meetings

What does School integration mean for your community?

Community meetings are a place for community members to come together for food, drinks, fellowship, and conversation. ASID community meetings provide a space for us to discuss the current state of school segregation in New York City, as well as how we experience and respond to it in our daily lives.

ASID community meetings are based on the organizing model of house meetings created by Fred Ross and Cesar Chavez with the Community Support Organization (CSO) and that Chavez later used in founding the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. Community meetings are used for a variety of purposes, including issue identification and message testing; raising awareness and shifting discourse; general community building; and community mobilization.

We are looking for hosts who will:

  1. Invite members of your community. Community can be defined very broadly. Some meetings take place in people’s homes with friends and draw 6-10 guests. We have also held meetings in collaboration with school parent associations for 20-30 people.  We find that generally, you must invite 4x the target number of attendees for your event. In other words, if you invite 40 people, you will most likely have 10 attendees

  2. Provide space. Most community meetings take place in the host’s home or local school, but you can be creative. Community meetings can be held anywhere where guests can sit in a circle for discussion.

  3. Plan food and drink. If you prefer to order pizza, make it a potluck, or just provide some wine and cheese--it's all good!

ASID will provide a facilitator, so that you can participate fully in hosting and the discussion with your community. 

Ready to bring the movement home?
Sign Up Here if you are interested in hosting!

Once you sign up, we will contact you to answer any questions, provide more information, and assign a facilitator to your meeting.

We need facilitators as well! The best training for facilitation is to attend a community meeting yourself. Afterward, we will provide you with discussion materials and coaching, and when you are ready, we will add you to our pool of facilitators.