Ed Chambers obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/may/29/ed-chambers

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Ed Chambers, who has died aged 85, was an American community organiser whose influence reached across the world. For 37 years he led the Industrial Areas Foundation, a network of faith- and community-based organisations centred on the US. In 1989, he was instrumental in supporting the founding and early development of the charity Citizens UK, which organises communities to act together for the common good.

Born in Clarion, Iowa, Ed was the son of Thomas, a farm worker who had emigrated to the US from Ireland, and his wife, Hazella, a music teacher. He received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and classics from St John’s University, Minnesota, and planned to train as a Roman Catholic priest. However, he was more fervently in favour of Vatican reforms than his superiors, and was encouraged to find another calling. This led him to take the progressive objectives of the gospels and use them to provide part of a framework for the radical agenda of community organising.

Ed brought discipline, analysis and rigour to the job of supporting key institutions to become more powerful and relevant to people’s lives. He knew that full-time, professional organisers were needed to ensure the interests of the sector were recognised and taken seriously by government and business. He also wrote a curriculum to train teachers, parents, and religious and community leaders in what he called “the art of politics”. This has produced a growing number of young, professional community organisers for whom supporting citizens’ alliances is a vocation.

As a result, organised communities in the US and Canada have been able to take on and win ambitious campaigns on issues such as housing, gun violence, racism and urban decay. In the UK there are citizens’ alliances in seven cities working together to improve both local and regional issues; as a result of their work, 1,500 accredited employers now pay the living wage, promoted by Citizens UK since 2001.

I first met Ed in 1979 when I was visiting the US on a Churchill fellowship focused on effective ways of strengthening communities, and sought him out in Chicago. It then took me 10 years to be in a position to help found Citizens UK as a sister training institute and organising alliance, but from 1989 onwards Ed became my trainer, critic, mentor and friend.

In 2010 Ed retired from his home in Chicago to Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland.

He is survived by his wife, the artist Ann Martin Chambers, and their five children, Eve, Mae, Joe, Lily and William.