On the evening of Wednesday, April 23, members of the Grinnell Organizing Collective met in the basement of the United Church of Christ. They gathered around a folding table spread with a white tablecloth, knitting needles in hand, notebooks out and ideas flowing.
The collective was founded after the November 2024 election in response to Donald Trump’s victory.
“It was literally Liz [Rodrigues] and I, and a handful of our friends, sitting in coffee time at church the Sunday after the election, going, ‘What the hell do we do now?’” said Kelsey Sandeno, one of the group’s original founders. “We decided to have a meeting, we had a second meeting, and then it all just kind of spiraled out from there.”
The group sought to provide an outlet for people who felt the urge to take action in the post-election period.
“There were four categories of thinking about, for people who are like, ‘I need to do something now,’ what role would they be most drawn to,” said Liz Rodrigues, Sandeno’s founding partner. “The four categories were: defending or protecting vulnerable communities, defending democracy, disrupting harmful practices and building alternatives.”
The collective is open to everyone and welcomes new faces whenever they appear.
“We’re very explicitly trying to pull folks from the biggest tent that we can, because these issues affect all of us,” said Alex Barnum, a community organizer and member of the collective. “Whatever we can do to build and try to mend the social fabric. I mean, if people are willing to come in, regardless of who they voted for, and help and build the community and make it more resilient and better — great, fantastic, we’re happy to have you.”
The attendance numbers of a given meeting usually depend on its purpose. When the group had a potluck right before the inauguration, and another at the beginning of March, 40 to 50 people showed up. The collective also supports different subgroups that target the social and political issues faced by people in and around Grinnell. Some subgroups include the Grinnell PFLAG chapter, a group focused on food insecurity, a crafting group, the Grinnell chapter of Indivisible and the Public-School Strong subgroup.
On this recent Wednesday night, which was more of an organizational meeting for the group’s steering committee, the topics discussed included Grinnell community gardens, supporting stockpiling in the face of natural disasters and planning for upcoming political protests.
The group is already seeing the positive impacts of their actions. Grinnell recently became one of seven other towns in Iowa with an officially registered chapter of PFLAG, largely in part due to the actions of the Grinnell Organizing Collective. Additionally, they were also able to support the donation of more than 700 pounds of food to the Mid-Iowa Community Action (MICA) food pantry.
Some of their other goals are harder to measure.
“To me,” said Rodrigues, “the biggest impact so far, and I just hope and pray that it continues, and I’m happy every time it does, is when we do have a big meeting, we have people from all different spaces in the community. And to me, that’s my number one goal, is to have relationships, to build relationships — especially to build relationships across the kind of social spaces where we might not run into each other.”
The Grinnell Organizing Collective is still in its early days, and although they’ve accomplished a lot, they say there is much more to do.
“I think we all hope, we all have the dream, that in the future, we won’t be as necessary, because things will be better, but until that pie in the sky dream happens, we’re here,” said Sandeno.
