Experienced Community Organizer

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.

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 do the following:  

  1. 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. 

  2. 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. 

  3. 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.

  4. 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.