Join our team! We are currently hiring for the following positions:
Organizing Fellowship: Shut Down Etowah Campaign
The Shut Down Etowah campaign (SDE), housed within Adelante Alabama Worker Center, is currently accepting applications for an Organizing Fellow. The Fellow will provide logistical, communications and organizing support to the SDE campaign leadership committee, member organizations, allies and community members to advance the campaign’s goals of exposing human rights abuses at the Etowah County Detention Center, securing the freedom of individual Etowah detainees, and terminating ICE’s contract with the center.
This is a six-month position, with the possibility of renewal for an additional six months based on an evaluation of the Fellow’s performance and available funds. The Organizing Fellow will receive a monthly stipend of $1000, plus reimbursement for travel expenses. The Fellow will be expected to commit an average of 15 hours per week to the campaign. The Fellow will be supervised by Adelante’s Enforcement & Detention Organizer, but will also be accountable to the SDE leadership committee, which follows a non-hierarchical, collective governance model.
About Shut Down Etowah:The Shut Down Etowah campaign is made up of individuals and civil, immigrant, and human rights organizations based in Alabama and across the country that are committed to ending the human rights abuses at the immigrant jail located inside the Etowah County Detention Center. We believe Etowah is far too broken to be fixed—the only adequate solution is to close it. For more information visitwww.shutdownetowah.org.
About Adelante:Adelante unites day laborers, domestic workers, and other low-wage and immigrant workers and their families in the Birmingham area to defend our rights, promote our dignity, and pursue justice for all. Since our founding in 2014 with the support of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Adelante has emerged as a strident voice for labor, immigrant and human rights in Alabama. Adelante merges community organizing, popular education, public and media advocacy, strategic litigation and legal representation, and arts and cultural celebration to realize a holistic vision for change from the bottom up. Our current work includes the campaign to make Birmingham the first sanctuary city in Alabama, wage theft and workers’ rights defense, community deportation defense, and the Shut Down Etowah campaign. More information about Adelante’s work is available at www.adelantealabama.org.
Position Description
The Shut Down Etowah Organizing Fellow’s responsibilities will include:
- Masterminding campaign logistics, including sending meeting reminders to leadership group members via email, WhatsApp, and other communication platforms, taking and disseminating meeting notes, and regularly checking in with leadership committee members about commitments and responsibilities
- Regularly updating SDE social media sites and website
- Drafting press releases and conducting media outreach
- Maintaining campaign contact lists and growing our database of contacts
- Recruiting new campaign participants and volunteers
- Representing SDE campaign at community events, conferences, presentations, and other outreach opportunities
- Providing logistical support to the letter-writing program and other efforts to center the voices of detained persons within the campaign
- Traveling to Gadsden approximately once per month to support actions, conduct outreach, and visit detained persons
- Working with Adelante staff and campaign leadership committee to draft funding proposals, budgets, and grant reports in order to secure necessary resources for the campaign
- Tracking campaign income and expenses
- Participating in Adelante staff meetings at least once a month, and attending monthly Asambleas, to keep Adelante staff and membership involved and up to date on campaign activities
Desired Qualifications:
- Passion for social justice, prison abolition, and defending the rights of immigrants and people of color
- Excellent interpersonal skills, patience, and humility
- Background in immigrants’ rights, racial justice or anti-detention organizing strongly preferred
- Understanding of and commitment to principles of popular education, campaign-based organizing, and developing leadership of directly effected people
- Working knowledge of the laws, agencies, and processes that govern immigrant detention in the U.S.
- Ability to work early and late hours and occasional weekends when necessary; willingness to travel to Gadsden on a regular basis
- Comfortable communicating in Spanish
- Strong writing, editing and proofreading skills
- Highly organized and self-motivated
How to Apply:
Please email your resume and a cover letter explaining why you are interested in and qualified for this position to Victoria Siciliano (admin@adelantelabama.org) with the subject line “Shut Down Etowah Organizing Fellowship”