The DF Journal is provides a place where thoughtful work finds an interested audience.  Consider submitting your own reflection, poem, video or art work.

​The Politics of Cruelty
​Ramon Duran

Warsan Shire

A Poem 
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well... Read more

William Chambers 

​William Chambers on His Father - “Ed believed in straight talking, on the value of interaction with fellow humans. He placed little worth on the “non-doing talkers” or the “self aggrandizers”. Listening to today he probably would have said something like: “Well, what good is that going to do anyone. I won’t be there to enjoy it. Save your breath and go do something useful.” Read more

Jenny Whitcher

Reflections on Democratic Education - All, I am enjoying this conversation and agitation around our collective work. In looking at the whole of the conversation there are three areas I will engage: 1) Critical hope versus fatalism, 2) Praxis examples of integrated relational organizing and agency-centered democracy, 3) Accepting the challenge. Read more

Kathleen O'Toole

Lion - 
In memoriam, Rev. Vernon Dobson, 1923-2013
Just this week a well-informed citizen  
in Washington, DC asked; “What happened 
to Baltimore?” Meaning its economy, meaning 
its port and politics, meaning its black community. Read more

Dick Harmon

Re-visioning Relational Meetings 
  • Part I - Relational Meetings are the core practice for the IAF  tradition of organizing. This paper is primarily addressed to veteran leaders and organizers, people who have deep experience with this “habit.” But it may also interest people with other levels and areas of experience—especially young people who already realize the limits of social media in building long-term civil sector power for non-partisan democracy. Read more
  • Part II - As we reflect on the energy and mystery in each person and the process as a whole, we can perhaps begin to see a “shimmer,” a “glow,” a “new life” in the people we have come to know; and in our own self. Read more
  • Part III - I’ll say it directly: this healing, courage and imagination can emerge from our relational work. If we do it well, we can live in dignity and die well. Here is what I see as possible, in multiplying local arenas: Read more
  • Recognizing Ed Chambers - In retrospect, I see in this brother a man deeply acquainted with suffering— like all of us, a bundle of paradoxes, operating in the tension of freedom and control, great generosity and narrow self-interest, work and family, public and private, compassion and cruelty, cooperation and competition, transparency and secrecy. In Ed, all of those paradoxes were enlarged, approaching larger-than-life at times. Read more

Frank Pierson

Tim McCluskey

  • What Now? - Tim McCluskey wrote this thoughtful piece shortly after the election of Donald Trump.   

Zeik Saidman

  • Molly Ivins and IAF - Molly Ivins Supported the IAF in Life and Death.
    For IAF leaders, speaking truth to power is a core value. Author and newspaper columnist Molly Ivins epitomized that value and continues to provide support, humor and in some cases inspiration to the Industrial Areas Foundation network even today, eight years after her death.  Read more
  • Reflections on Southwest IAF Leadership Training​ - I left Fort Worth, Texas in a rented van with my wife of 10 years and 9-month-old son belted in his little car seat by my side. That was 1984.  Our departure marked the end of 14 years of work with the Industrial Areas Foundation, the last 3 and 1/2  helping to build a broad based IAF affiliated organization in Fort Worth. Read more
  • Colorado IAF: A Major Step Forward - It was bitter cold on the night of December 8, 2016 when over 100 leaders from diverse backgrounds braved a fresh snowfall to gather at Cleaves Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church ((CME) in northeast Denver. They came from all over the metropolitan area to participate in the End-of-the-Year Celebration and Commitment event of the Colorado Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). Read more.

Rev. Paul Buckwalter

  • Saul's Legacy - I met Saul Alinsky in the basement of a black Baptist Church on Chicago's south side in January of 1965.  A collection of Protestant and Catholic clergy, who were undergoing a "60 day wonder" course in community organizing at the Urban Training Center for Christian Mission, came to hear Saul expound on the virtues of building a mass based community organization. Read more
  • People Power: A Review

The Oracle Bus Blockade: Two Views

  • Bill Droel - This past summer Oracle, Arizona reflected back to us two defining cultural images. Oracle with a population of about 4,000 is 40 miles north of Tucson and it is slightly more than 100 miles north of Mexico. Read more
  • Frank C. Pierson, Jr. - Then and Now
    Events of the Great Oracle Bus Blockade on July 15, 2014 began with a letter posted on the bulletin board of the Oracle Post Office.  The former head of Magma Copper Company security, fired up by a tip from Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, issued a call to arms to fellow “patriots”. Read more

Crossing the Line

A poem by Robert Neustadt - 
Little children cross the line.
Thousands, 
legions of children,
seeking the love of a mother,
a father, a place to be.
A place where you can eat. Read more

Amanda Tattersall

My Hope for Sydney: A Reflection by Amanda Tattersall - On Monday morning at 10:34 am, I got an SMS from my sister saying “stay away from Martin Place!” My heart skipped a beat. I had only just left the Queen Victoria Building, where my mum had picked up my 4 year old son so they could go off and look at the Christmas decorations in the city. Read more

Rules for Revolutionaries: A Review - ... there are some fundamental weaknesses in the argument it presents. My motivation in writing this review is to caution campaigners, organisers and activists to not take these so called “rules” as gospel.

Mike Gecan

  • Muslim American Society Remarks - ​ ... Once 9/11 happened, there was great anxiety in the Chicago Muslim community and in the United Power organization. Should everyone just lie low? Should we remain quiet? Should we avoid attracting more attention to Muslims and those working with Muslims? Should we stop organizing entirely? These were tense and serious questions. Read more
  • Gecan on Chambers - When you work with someone as dynamic as Ed Chambers, you end up with a great gift: a lifetime of memories, vignettes, and stories. I'll start with my very first impression. Read more

Perry Perkins

  • Project on Lived Theology - A number of years ago I read a book by Charles Marsh for the first time.  It was God’s Long Hot Summer, his book about Freedom Summer of 1964, in my native state of Mississippi.  He wrote about that summer from the perspective of four participants with particular focus on how faith led them to their place in the events of this tumultuous summer in the life of Mississippi and in the nation. Read more
  • Reflections on Charleston - In the introduction to his book the Social Teachings of Black Churches, Peter Parris says that Black churches have at the center of their social teaching a Biblical Anthropology that is based on the Biblical narrative of the Creation.  In the Genesis account we are told that all human beings are created in the likeness and image of God. Read more
  • Further Reflections on Charleston - The aftermath of the massacre at Mother Emanuel has led me back to a frequent topic of my reflections: fear.  These reflections are not around just random fear but fear deliberately created to preserve the system of white supremacy. Read more

Bill Droel

  • Rochester Riot - Fifty years ago this month the City of Rochester exploded in three days of frustration, confusion, destruction, looting, arrests of 1,000 people, injuries to 350 and four deaths. It was among the first of 750 urban riots to occur within a seven-year time frame. Read more
  • Exposure to FIGHT - When President John Kennedy was murdered in November 1963, I was a 16-year old high school student in Rochester. For the first time I felt that the world outside my otherwise seemingly perfect home, school and church setting contained forces I did not understand. Those feelings intensified a few months later when the riot occurred in Rochester. I wanted things to make sense—but now they didn’t. Read more
  • Oracle Bus Blockade - This past summer Oracle, Arizona reflected back to us two defining cultural images. Read more
  • People Power: Reflections on the Story - Truth is hard to spot when we are in the middle of things. We need opportunities, forums and tools to step back and evaluate our experiences and to uncover more of ourselves in that reflection. Read more​