This next week I will be participating in two events that celebrate progress on water for all children in Jersey City’s schools: a book launch on Tuesday (the book is about populism, but from my perspective it’s about water), and our Jersey City Together water action on Friday, October 28.

Thanks to the advocacy of Jersey City Together as well as the work of public servants such as Superintendent Norma Fernandez, as school started this fall more kids have access to working drinking fountains than has been the case for more than a decade. Almost half of Jersey City Public School children are in schools where water remediation has already happened; one quarter of students are in schools where water remediation is in progress. For one quarter of the students, plans for remediation are not clear. For more details, see this summary. This wonderful graphic is by graphic designer Greg Nelson. Brigid D’Souza has also written an update over at Civic Parent.

To get to this point has taken several years of work by a strong team of families and community members, pushing public officials to work together to fix the water systems and install new water fountains. It was one of the first things we heard when we started listening to families: why don’t the water fountains have potable water? We first asked for this publicly at our action back in March of 2019, and then Superintendent Franklin Walker promised to, and did, start this work.

Thanks to my Rutgers colleagues Arlene Stein and Sarah Tobias, I had the opportunity to talk about my work with Jersey City Together on a panel with two amazing organizers: Heather Booth and Scot Nakagawa. This was in February 2020, and was one of the last public events I attended before the pandemic. It was also right after we had gotten the first tangible movement on water, with installation of water fountains at PS15.

The conversation was really amazing and fun, and it has now been published as a chapter in a volume edited Professors Stein and Tobias, The Perils of Populism, which will have an official virtual launch event on Tuesday October 25 at noon. Should be fun, so come if you can. I’m just an ordinary, local leader in an organization, so it was really fun to talk with these veteran organizers about the work.

Now, more than two years later, we have more progress on water, with still more to do. For me, this is why we need broad based power organizations that are in it for the long term. It is not glamorous work, learning all of the details of the process that is followed by various public agencies, finding the places where pressure can be exerted, while building and maintaining the organized people who can exert that pressure. But it is necessary.

Every fall I teach a class on community organizing, and for the past two years we have read Reveille for a New Generation, with many essays written by leaders and organizers of local IAF organizations. One piece some students have found puzzling is an essay by organizer Alisa Glassman titled “Don’t Win Too Quickly”. Her point is that the work of getting to victory is also the work of organizing, of building the network of organized people to not just win but keep on winning, because there is always more work to do. The progress on water is great; there is a little more work to do.

We’re in it for the long haul.