There are two threads to this story. The first is about a tiny town of 27 houses named Leyden, coal mining company houses that all looked alike purchased by WW2 vets after the mines closed. This town was a pocket of rural poverty in a rapidly growing county adjacent to a booming city of Denver. In the 1950's and early 1960's, however, the town was distant enough from the city to be able to create its own sense of community, manage its own water system, and for a while house its own school. I used a tin tub and an outhouse until I was 10. Dogs running loose all over town was common, and Leyden residents raised horses, goats, chickens and even pigs on their tiny lots.

But this sense of identity and place began to change as growth touched the community and the children were loaded on big yellow school buses to travel to the nearest suburban school. That contrast of class and culture stayed with me throughout my growing up years and laid the foundation for my passion for organizing. I knew - as did all the children from Leyden - that I did not come from the same place, culture or priveledge as most of the people I went to school with. I couldn't articulate how or why the difference, but it seemed to me that my parents were honest, hard working people and somehow that didn't count for what it should.

The second thread was simply the opportunity to be exposed to multiple movements. As with everyone my age - watching Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, being inspired by the message of Robert and John Kennedy, and watching the Vietnam War play out all on television - set the stage. My college experience gave me the chance to be directly involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement - and then the Chicano Civil rights movement and an OEO funded organization called the West Side Action Center gave me my first on the ground experience with organizing.

One of the most influential people in my development as an organizer was a Western organizer named Dan Lopp. Dan grew up in Missoula, MT as the son of a hard nosed union steam fitter. I could relate to Dan as someone that came from similar roots and found his moral compass to be strong and his sense of blue collar identity in tact after decades as an organizer.

Dan practiced the ethic of being the servant of other people's development more than any other organizer I have known. I learned from him to challenge myself to create space for other's leadership to emerge, to not do what people are capable of doing for themselves, and to look at myself with eyes as clear as I can manage to make sure that I am not organizing primarily to stoke my own ego - i.e. is this really about justice and about leadership and constituency development?

The second lesson has come out of living in Idaho, engaging in rural organizing and working with Native American communities. It is related to time, patience and attention to the integrity of the organizing process. There are lots of shortcuts we can take and lots of legitimate concerns about responding to the immediacy of the moment and the opportunity. But ultimately, if we lose people - we lose. There is a dance between what people are ready for, invested in and willing to take their own risks for - and the sense of immediacy about moving and winning the issue. The dance is the art form part of organizing.

The Chicano civil rights movement which provided the context for my first experiences in organizing and movement

Turn of the 20th century labor movement in the West and parallel nationalist movements in Europe in the same period

Death of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King