Meet the Staff! Q&A With Sam

Welcome to CAAS Staff Spotlight #3! This time, we’re meeting Sam, one of the Community Organizers here at CAAS who works to mobilize tenants and harness the power of collective action!

What’s your role? How long have you been at CAAS?

I’ve worked as a Community Organizer at CAAS since May of 2021. My role here is to unite and empower Somerville residents, primarily low to no-income renters to stand up for their rights and fight for change. Another critical part of my role is developing leadership of the people who are the most impacted by Somerville's affordable housing crisis.

How did you get started in this field?

My first exposure to community organizing was in college. The main organizing I was involved with was in solidarity with dining hall workers. We organized and won a living wage campaign. That was fuel for me to be like “this works!'' I was raised by a working class, single mom so when I went to school, I knew I wanted to study why there’s poverty and what we can do about it. I studied sociology and came to an understanding that community organizing is one of the most effective ways to make real change, so after that I was like “I want to be an organizer.” 

I had a winding route to becoming an organizer by trade. Before CAAS I was working with worker-owned businesses aka cooperatives. It's similar because it's about worker engagement and empowerment. Here I also share tools with folks to help them engage productively as a group and feel empowered to participate to the fullest extent that they want to.

What keeps you energized around this work?

I see it working. We see some successes and it shows that this is worth it. Sometimes my anger and frustration about the unjustness of access to housing in our society is also fuel. 

The people- we’ve got a good team here and I’m building genuine relationships with the residents involved in this work. 

What have you found challenging about this work?

The need for this work in Somerville is very high and we only have so much time in the day. Housing affordability is very complicated in our society, but it wouldn't be if we guaranteed housing as a human right!

Also, it's frustrating how hard it is to pass sensible legislation, like lifting the ban on rent control. On the other hand, something I appreciate about this work is that we’re not only going after policy changes. We’re also building a movement led by the people who are most impacted, and that’s what’s needed for long term change.

What was an exciting project or big win that you’ve experienced here?

I would say it was really powerful when we secured an extension of the Somerville eviction moratorium. I believe the organizing we did helped extend it multiple times, but I'm specifically talking about last fall. Basically, they were gonna let the local moratorium expire once and for all, but of course so many renters in Somerville were still struggling from COVID, and we’re still in a pandemic, so we had a campaign around extending the Somerville eviction moratorium. We had phone calls and emails to the Board of Health and the Mayor, and a rally outside of City Hall. We joined the Board of Health meeting over Zoom and the community made their voices heard. After that, they let it continue for as long as we asked for, which was through the end of June of this year. Somerville had the longest moratorium in Massachusetts. It really demonstrated the power of the movement that we’ve been trying to build

What do you like to do for fun outside of work?

This summer I was growing vegetables, herbs and flowers on my back porch. Cosmos, which didn’t do so well, but tomatoes, basil, chard, hot peppers. And I enjoy playing board games with my friends. We just got this game called Strike! from a worker-owned co-op board game developer that's about workers organizing, fighting drones and going on strike.