Lew Finfer | Community Organizer Genealogy Project

Lewis Finfer

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Work History

Start Year	End Year	Organization	Position
1970	1973	Dorchester Tenants Action Council	Organizer
1974	1975	Dorchester Community Action Council	Director Lead Organizer
1975	1977	Massachusetts Fair Share	Organizer
1978	1980	Somerville United Neighborhoods	Director
1980	1980	Massachusetts Community Action	Organizer
1980	1984	Massachusetts Tenants Organization	Director
1985		Organizing and Leadership Training Center (also dba Massachusetts Communities Action Network)	Director
1985	1991	Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance	Director
1996	2002	Greater Boston Interfaith Organization	Founder Director Lead Organizer

Organizer Profile

What brought you into the work?:

I participated in the anti-Vietnam War Movement and the Civil Rights Movement while in high school. Learning that there were civil rights issues in my northern suburban home town made me understand that the Civil Rights Movement was a community by community movement and the value of local organizing. I then looked for a chance to be involved in social justice issues while in college and that brought me to volunteering for the Dorchester Tenants Action Council in Boston in September 1970

Share 3 lessons you have learned through your work in organizing.:

1. Learning how to listen and challenge
2. Dogged, relentless persistence can get results
3. Humility and the poignancy of learning about people's stories of pain and courage

Who has inspired you in your organizing?:

Many leaders in all the organizations I've worked for.

Civil rights leaders and organizers like Diane Nash, Robert Moses, Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Rev. Martin Luther King

Figures from other countries like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Mahatma Ghandi, Marek Edelman

Union leaders like Cesar Chavez, John L. Lewis, Powers Hapgood, Walter Reuther

Other organizers I've learned from like Stephanie Gut, Joe Fleming, Gordan Whitman, Scott Reed, Jim Drake, Jim Dickson, Jeanne DuBois, Julie Rawson, Bill Thompson, Ken Galdston, Stan Holt, Shel Trapp

What movements or political moments have most influenced your organizing career?:

Civil Rights Movement--I participated a little in my home town in organizing on the Poor People's Campaign in 1968 and have had a lifelong interest in the history and lessons of that movement.

The political movements in Eastern Europe against communism like Solidarity in Poland, the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia.

The resistance during the Holocaust like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the rebellions in concentration camps

Are you still in organizing? If not, in what other fields have you worked? What are you doing now?:

I am still a community organizer with the Massachusetts Communities Action Network which is affiliated with the PICO National Network.

Genealogy

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Lewis Finfer's Trainers

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Lewis Finfer's Coaches

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Lewis Finfer's Peers

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Lewis Finfer's Trainees

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Person	Organization
Black, Bill	MICAH (OLTC, MCAN)

Lewis Finfer's Coachees

Who did you mentor, coach, or consult with you in your organizing career? (Please list people who have stayed in the field or a related field for at least 3 years.)