Experienced Community Organizer (5+ years)

Organization: Governments, landlords, employers, school districts, and other powerful actors use artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and related technologies to make decisions about how low-income people work, live, learn, and survive. Among many other issues, AI is used to determine whether someone gets a rental apartment, how much they pay, whether someone gets a job, how much they earn, what conditions they work under, whether someone gets benefits (like food assistance, unemployment insurance, medical insurance, etc.), and whether families will be investigated for child neglect. When people are hurt by a decision AI is used to make, they have few places to turn. TechTonic Justice exists to change this.

TechTonic Justice is a newly launched organization to fight the ground-level harms AI and related technologies cause low-income communities. We do this mainly by supporting local justice movements--legal aid organizations, frontline service providers, grassroots organizers, and affected communities--to identify and fight harmful uses of AI. We emphasize a multidimensional advocacy approach that blends litigation, community activation, public education, and narrative advocacy. We are based in Los Angeles and offer our services nationwide, with emphasis on the South and the West Coast.

Position description: This permanent Community Organizer position is fully remote with significant travel anticipated (~1-2 trips per month). Candidates who live in or have extensive working experience in the U.S. South are particularly encouraged to apply. This position will be the organization’s first hire and will join the Founder/President as TechTonic Justice’s only staff. Further organizational expansion is expected within 3-6 months, subject to securing more foundation funding.

The Community Organizer will help to define and implement TechTonic Justice’s advocacy approach. Any chance of long-term success in improving the lives of low-income people and minimizing the harms that AI causes requires that those closest to injustice—the communities affected and their allies and advocates—be front and center in change efforts. To that end, the Community Organizer will do the following:

• Help develop and implement TechTonic Justice’s organizing strategy. While our mission and core functions are set, the execution remains flexible. The Organizer will help us to make sense of the relationship between AI-related technologies and injustice for the organizations and communities we serve and develop and execute outreach and engagement plans to best help us get to reducing AI-related harms as quickly and effectively as possible. This includes building and maintaining relationships in person and remotely, holding meetings, showing up for prospective allies, and keeping track of external relations. While doing this, the Organizer will ensure that we learn from the organizations and communities we serve so that we can tune our approach to best meet their needs.
• Train and educate. The first step to fighting AI harms is helping people to identify that they are happening and know what forms of resistance are possible. To these ends, the Community Organizer will develop, refine, and give presentations and workshops remotely and in person.
• Build infrastructure to facilitate policy engagement. Policy discourse around AI largely happens without the involvement of people on the ground who face AI-based decision-making and fight against it. For various structural reasons, it is not easy for people with ground-level experience to engage in the discourse. The Organizer will help build the infrastructure needed to facilitate this. Such infrastructure may include (a) understandable, actionable summaries of key AI developments and policy ideas, (b) platforms to share information about AI policy and public participation opportunities, (c) story-telling support for affected communities and advocates, including connections to media platforms and, as needed, media training, and (d) platforms for peer-to-peer information sharing.
• Be part of technical assistance. As affected communities and advocates identify instances where AI causes harm, they will seek our assistance to build multidimensional responses. The Community Organizer will be part of such efforts to ensure that various forms of advocacy—not just legal—are considered, planned for, and implemented.

Job requirements:

• At least 5 years of experience of community or labor organizing demonstrating success (can be broadly defined—we know these are hard fights that don’t always deliver short-term wins) and progressively more responsibility
• Experience organizing people and communities who live in different geographic locations (cities, states, and regions)
• Knowledge of tools and best practices for digital organizing
• Deep knowledge of poverty-related and/or tech-related justice issues and commitment to learning what isn’t known
• Familiarity with the front-line social services ecosystem, including legal aid, hunger relief organizations, community health clinics (including mental health), shelters, domestic violence advocates, etc.
• Excellent public-facing communication skills, both verbally and in writing
• Independent initiative that does not require intensive, detail-heavy supervision
• The ability to, within strategic parameters, seek out and build relationships with people, organizations, and communities that may benefit from our expertise
• Flexibility to adapt as needed to a fluid environment of a startup nonprofit organization where immediate needs and timelines may shift
• Collaborative spirit and the skills needed to work affirmingly with teammates, partners, coalition members, and the communities we exist to serve
• Ability to manage several different kinds of work activities concurrently, prioritize appropriately, and deliver quality work product promptly
• Understanding that, generally, the people we serve will need us to move with urgency and comfort doing so (meeting tight deadlines, shifting focus, etc.)
• Commitment to improving the material conditions of low-income people
• Comfort articulating the intersections between poverty, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, language, age, disability, and related characteristics
• Empathy and righteous fury
• Willingness to document work and expenses as needed to comply with management practices and grant requirements
• Driver’s license, access to a car, and proximity to a convenient airport for travel

Other valued attributes:

• Functional fluency in a second language that is used by significant numbers of low-income people; Spanish is particularly helpful
• Skill at communicating via social media, including writing text, designing graphics, and/or creating or editing video (that said, this is not a posting for a Communications person; in the future, we will seek additional Comms support)
• Candidates who live in or have extensive working experience in the U.S. South are particularly encouraged to apply

If you are close to meeting the requirements but are unsure (for example, you have 4.5 years of organizing experience), please still consider applying or email us to ask.

We encourage applications from Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, women, LGBTQI+ people, people with disabilities, formerly incarcerated people, and people most impacted by systemic injustice.

Salary: $80-$100K, depending on experience. Current budget projections anticipate annual cost-of-living salary increases. Service time raises are anticipated but still to be determined (subject to budget considerations).

Schedule Flexibility: TechTonic Justice will allow flexibility in scheduling regular work hours to fit the successful candidate’s personal situation, including health needs or caregiving responsibilities. This flexibility will be limited by reasonable organizational needs, including sufficient availability for external meetings, community relationships, and interaction with the President. Candidates should anticipate occasional deviation from scheduled work hours to complete deadline-driven projects.

*** Presently, we do not anticipate offering regular four-day workweeks. ***

Benefits: The benefits package is still being put together. We anticipate covering 100% of quality medical/dental/vision insurance for the employee, covering a portion of dependents’ insurance, contributing at least to 3% of annual salary to a retirement account, and providing generous leave time. More information will be available at the time of interviews.

To apply: Submit the following to admin@techtonicjustice.org by 9 p.m. pacific time on February 14. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. Applications received after this time will not be considered.

• Cover letter explaining your specific interest in and qualifications for the job (please, no generic cover letters)
• Resume
• Addendum of up to 3 pages (double-spaced, 12-point font, standard margins) about a specific organizing campaign you worked on. This should include a narrative explaining the issue around which you organized, the group of people with whom you organized, the chief challenges, the strategy and tactics used (in broad terms), and what successes or failures were involved. Please thoughtfully incorporate links to any supplementary material you want us to see, such as media stories, social media posts, blogs, flyers, art, or photos.

Process: Applications will be reviewed as they come in. The most promising applicants will be selected for a first interview. The most promising interviewees will be selected for a second interview. There is a possibility that we will ask candidates to complete a short exercise requiring no more than 1 hour of time. If we do so, we will reasonably compensate candidates for the time spent on the exercise. We will check references of finalists. We reserve the option to conduct a third round of interviews if necessary. We plan to make a decision in March with the successful applicant starting in April.

Accommodations: We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities during the application process and after hiring. Please write admin@techtonicjustice.org to request any needed accommodations.

Questions: Please submit any questions to admin@techtonicjustice.org. Please do not call unless needed for purposes of accommodations.

English proficiency required. We also value functional fluency in a second language that is used by significant numbers of low-income people, with Spanish being particularly helpful.