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Humans of New Ro: James Mumm

By Annie Gombiner

“You can organize people to do anything that is in their self interest and aligns with their values. After having conversations with people to learn about their values, interests and problems, you will typically find a particularly prevalent problem to focus on. Then, you figure out what people want to do and who among them is ready to lead. Not the loudmouth. Not the person who makes all the jokes. It’s usually the quiet person who everyone takes seriously. I learned those lessons with my work at various organizations in Chicago. After working at People's Action, which is a national organization, I decided that I wanted to do true grassroots organizing. I organized with the city-wide tenants’ organization in Chicago called Metropolitan Tenants Organization, building tenant associations around the city. Then I went to ONE Northside for 5 years, where I worked on the land use and housing committee. For the committee, we recruited from 4 categories of groups: congregations, mutual aid associations, non-profits, and small businesses. I would go to a community leader, like a pastor, and ask if they could suggest people to step up. I would usually get about 10 suggestions. Then, I would call everyone up and ask to meet. I did that 20 or 30 times a week for weeks and weeks. Eventually I had a team of 3 co-chairs leading about 30 members who could turn out 500 people to big events and meetings. Rosa was a Baptist and an immigrant from Mexico. Bob was a Lutheran pastor of a service-oriented church. Tom was a lay Catholic and social justice activist. Experiences like that prove that anyone can organize. Anyone.” - James Mumm

“I grew up with political organizing. My mom and my stepfather were radical. They got to the root of problems: Why are people poor? Why do people get discriminated against based on the color of their skin? Why do minorities think they can rule over majorities? It was the air I breathed. When I was young, my parents divorced, leaving my mother to raise two children with no college degree in Buffalo, and I saw my father on alternating weekends, holidays, and summers. She enrolled at the University of Buffalo largely because they had a child care center. However, amidst the austerity of the mid 1970s, while my mom was going there, the center closed. The school claimed that they needed to save money, but the closure meant that many mothers who were students could no longer attend. So, the moms protested. I must have been 4 at the time. We were sitting in our strollers outside the daycare center. It was a little confusing, but I think I understood that my mom was there with other moms to protest. The school did not reopen it, so my mom went on welfare and ended up working at a factory. She couldn’t figure out another way to go to school without child care. Then she met my stepfather and we moved to Chicago. My mother was 36 when she finally graduated college at Northeastern University. She was a worker and an elected union officer in an auto parts factory and would go to school at night, leaving my brother and me to sort of raise ourselves, like a lot of kids in that era. When I graduated high school, I enrolled at SUNY Oswego and then I transferred to Albany. I was not the world’s best student, and after a year, I dropped out and worked as a dishwasher in Albany. I felt like it was really stupid, though, so I returned to Chicago. Following in my mother’s footsteps, I applied for a job at People’s Action. As a 19-year-old, I got a full-time minimum wage position. I was doing pretty low level things - data entry, making phone calls, whatever a 19-year-old could do. I continuously picked up projects as I went along and I organized a housing coalition that made significant improvements in the city’s housing court.” - James Mumm

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