75 House Meetings & Counting
In May, we announced the launch of Sugar Freedom Project’s House Meeting Campaign. Since then, SFP has held over 75 house meetings with over 450 attendees across the flatlands of Oakland, with community members gathering among friends, family, and neighbors to:
• Learn how the City of Oakland works and about the City's decision-making processes
• Discuss their priorities for issues they want fixed in their neighborhoods, and
• Develop their proposed community-led solutions into collective action.
With input and insight from over 450 flatland residents, SFP leaders held their first session of Community Action Research last month. 12 House Meeting hosts convened for the session, first exploring the distinction between traditional academic research and community action research.
While traditional research is conducted by institutions defining the problems facing a community, collecting information, and leaving to analyze and publish their diagnoses, community action research empowers community members to conduct the research themselves. Community members identify the problems, develop the research tools, collect and analyze the data, share their learnings with their community, and decide what actions to take collectively to address the problems.
The group dove into the initial round of analysis, assessing community priorities emerging from the first 180 surveys. They engaged in deep discussion and lively debate over their assessment of House Meeting data and learned the importance of cutting an issue: while there is a lot of work to be done to promote equity in the flats, affecting meaningful change requires identifying and strategizing around specific, actionable issues that reflect community priority.
In a continuing effort to create spaces that deepen community engagement, build relationships, and develop leadership, SFP is launching our Political Education Workshop Series for flatlands residents with a new curriculum in September. This Fall’s 6-week workshop series is being led and developed by core SFP members, with sessions exploring:
• Community Organizing 101 & Organizing's theory of change
• Telling Our Stories: Dominant and counter narratives
• Root Causes: The systems that create our problems
• Equity and Disparity: The racial history of Oakland
Plus, sessions on The City of Oakland’s Budget Process and City Departments.
Organizer Shoutout!
Two new Resident Organizers have joined Sugar Freedom Project! Carmen and Mercedes have been leading our 2025 House Meeting Campaign, base-building in their neighborhoods to mobilize folks around a collective vision for an Oakland that allows all of its residents to thrive.
This week, they’re heading to San Juan Bautista for Spadework’s Mid-Program Organizer Training. Coming together with fellow organizers from Oakland, California's Central Valley, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, they will go deep into Spadework base-building tools to sharpen their organizing practice and share their learnings during this 5-day convening.
“I have learned to connect with my community based on its needs and the problems we share. Our community has gained knowledge of the tools we’ve shared through our house meetings. By speaking with the community, I could see that their needs are also mine, and that I need to keep learning in order to reach that point.
The one-on-one gives me the opportunity to learn, listen, and understand the dialogue around the problem. People learn to release their frustration and anger, and that will motivate them to keep going, to become leaders, and to raise their voices.”
Mercedes, SFP Organizer
