One month after the 2024 election, around 200 people gathered at Ithaca’s Southside Community Center.
Booths covered with banners, home-made pins and informational poster boards lined the community center’s gym. People drifted from table to table, some greeting old friends, others making timid first introductions.
They were all there for the Ithaca Organizing Fair, attempting to figure out what comes next.
One of the organizers in attendance was Jorge DeFendini, the chair of Ithaca’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter and a former Ithaca alderperson.
Defendini went into the election knowing that it wasn’t going to solve all or even most of his political problems.
“The neoliberal establishment Democrats do not deliver for working people, and the Republicans certainly don't,” DeFendini said.
Still, he said a looming second term for President-elect Donald Trump has left some Ithacans angry, confused, and paralyzed with fear.
However, DeFendini said it’s important to remember that elections are not the only thing that decides the fate of a community.
“Do not be paralyzed. Do not agonize. Organize,” he said. “The best time to get involved in organizing was yesterday. The second best time is today, right now,”
‘Somebody was paying attention’
Taylor Moon was another organizer at the fair. He’s part of the Ithaca Tenants Union, which advocates for renters in the city.
“One of the main focuses of the tenants’ union is that nobody knows what we need more than ourselves,” Moon said. “Nobody else is going to be as interested in advocating for us as we are.”
Moon said he’s seen real change in his community because of the tenants’ union. He points to the passage of good cause eviction legislation in Ithaca and the increasing number of tenants on the city’s common council. It has also given Moon a sense of purpose and a community.
“Genuinely having this as an outlet for all of my general anxieties about the world has been one of the best decisions in my life,” he said.
Moon recalled the first time he felt like his organizing work made a difference in someone’s life. He said an elderly woman was being harassed by her landlord and that the union was there to support her.
“There was very little that the union could do actively, other than just make sure that [the landlord] knew that somebody was paying attention and would notice if he did anything too egregious,” Moon said.
During one incident, Moon said a group of union members were able to help de-escalate the harassment and give her a moment of peace.
“It was a small victory,” he said. “There was this woman who had nobody else in her life who was advocating for her and we were showing up for her.”
Ithaca’s culture
Kayla Matos, Ithaca’s first ward alderperson and deputy director of the Southside Community Center, which hosted the fair, believes organizing is embedded in Ithaca’s culture.
“I remember growing up and being a little kid and driving through towns on the weekends and seeing like these activist groups and these organizing groups speaking up against things, holding signs, doing their rallies,” she said.
It was particularly significant for the Southside Community Center, which was created to support Ithaca’s Black community, to host the fair, Matos said.
“A lot of the time within the Black and brown communities, I feel like we hear a lot of the folks echo that their voices don't matter and that they feel disconnected from politics,” she said.
Hosting the fair is just one way to help empower those communities to make political and social change, Matos said.
“We need to continue to speak up and really fight for our communities and for other marginalized communities. Having the organizing fair here at Southside kind of shows that it's a safe space.”
As an alderperson, Matos has seen firsthand how organizing can impact local government. She said one example is a resolution that passed the council in March calling for a bilateral ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The resolution was introduced by Matos and Alderperson Phoebe Brown. Matos said the legislation was one of the “highlights of her career so far,” and involved lots of public comment and changes to the bill.
“We did it very transparently on the floor, even though it was a little messy and hard to follow,” she said.
Matos said she did not initially intend to introduce a ceasefire resolution. But that changed after she was approached by a group of community organizers who asked her to present the legislation.
Matos said it is just one way that Ithacans can and will continue to make change in their communities, whether that’s through rallies or protests, letter writing campaigns, or calls to their representatives.
“There's so many ways that folks and the community can come together to push for a greater good,” she said.
Matos encouraged people interested in getting involved to reach out to nonprofits and other groups that serve the causes and communities that they care about.